The Urban Farmer's Almanac

It’s been a pretty crazy month, living in home-improvement limbo, leaving town more than we should have, and trying to keep up with everything. Despite the fact that I don’t actually have time to do so, I decided to take a break from work today to turn the compost. It really is one of my life’s great comforts… I’ve written about it before here, but every time it surprises me how satisfying it is.

I think the reason it blew me away today was because I’ve been so busy, working so hard on a variety of fronts, and then I realized that compost is one thing that does all the hard work on its own. I just throw plants and grass clippings in, jab a shovel into it a few times, and then it’s invaded by worms and everything is set in motion. I am so mentally and emotionally weary that it was completely refreshing to see that excellence occurs without my intervention. It gave me a little hope.

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We went to Yakima on our yearly pilgrimage for wineries, minor league baseball, and of course, fruit stands. We came home with way too much produce to deal with, including two boxes (20 lbs each?) of tomatoes. They sat on the counter for about a week, and finally we got motivated and got to work on them. We canned 15 quarts and 12 pints of stewed tomatoes, and what didn’t fit in our two huge kettles for stewing, we decided to dry in the new (to us) dehydrator. I am hoping this method works a little better than last year’s tomato drying experiment.

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Peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes from the garden.

The garden has been neglected due to a massive home improvement project, but I finally got out and picked everything that was ripe in the hoop house and up front in our meager potato patch (that is all the potatoes we got this year, minus a few I pulled up earlier).

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