Like Squirrels Storing Nuts For the Winter

The new freezer was delivered on Thursday.  No, it isn't a replacement; it's an addition.  Our existing capacities were exhausted but the garden is still producing.  What's to become of all the greens yet to be cut, all the tomatoes still to be pulled, all the peppers not yet mature?  There is always the canner, but we have pickled and preserved about all we can.  I like salsa better than most, but there is a limit to how much we need on the shelves.  We have made enough ketchup to last us into the next century, and that is still assuming that we give much of it away. 

And we aren't willing to waste the harvest.

Though we regularly have to remember and clarify it for ourselves, we didn't move out here to start a produce business.  We nested ourselves on this small farmstead to work our way into the circle of knowledge of how to grow food.  And we are learning.  And though it continues to catch me unprepared, with learning comes a harvest -- especially in the case of this year, a large one.  Undoubtedly those who actually know what they are doing with seed and soil and comparable space could grow considerably more, but we have surprised ourselves this year.  Or maybe I should say that the plants have borne the surprise.  Having emerged from seed, they have reached and stretched and brought forth fruit.  We have dug potatoes and carrots and garlic and beets; pulled up radishes and onions and pulled off cucumbers, squash and corn and beans.  We have snipped asparagus and rhubarb and lettuce and kale, cut cabbage and okra and broccoli and herbs.  And, as I mentioned, one or two tomatoes.  Or three.

But the learning incurs an obligation.  The point of growing it is eating it.  This isn't, in other words, a purely academic endeavor.  At least implicit in this life-altering undertaking was an unspoken resolve to shoulder responsibility for feeding ourselves -- not just for the season, but through the year. 

And as you may have noticed, food isn't generally willing to just sit around waiting for its menu to come.  That puddle on the counter -- that odor in the air -- is plant-speak for "missed opportunity."  Hence, the dehydrator; hence, the canning -- the jars, the lids, the boiling water, the shelves -- and hence, the new freezer which joins our "old" new freezer already filled.  The Twin Towers of gastronomic potential, just like the squirrels outside hording nuts we are two steps closer to preparedness for the winter. 

Just don't let the power go out.