2022 Garden Haul & Food Storage

This year marked our 3rd on the homestead and our 2nd year of garden! I’m realizing more and more how important it is to know where your food is coming from and it doesn’t get much more transparent than just growing it yourself. It’s hard work but I’ve found a lot of joy in the process and so far each year has gotten much easier (it’s still frickin hard).

June 2022 - The garden has begun!

Before moving to upstate NY we lived in the concrete jungle of Brooklyn with our above ground garden. More and more I’ve realized just how much living there had affected me and my perspective. While energetic and inspiring I always felt not quite right like I wasn’t meant to stay.

It was never my plan to live in the city but I got a sick job that at the time I really loved but jobs aren’t the only reason to be somewhere. Standing amongst thousands of blurry bodies hustling around trying to make a living, find love, find themselves etc was overwhelming for me. So we left and started our next chapter upstate.

Our garden now stands in hopefully it’s forever home and boyyyyyy am I so frickin proud of the it this year. We’ve started to figure out what we really like to eat (kale, tomatoes, squash) and what gets wasted (eggplant, cucumbers, green peppers) along with how we can store food for the winter. And what seemed really daunting last year felt so much easier this year, which I was really thankful for. Currently we freeze, dehydrate and use the water canning method to store our food.

Dehydrating was probably one of my favorites. After a month of drought we finally had a weekend of rain and with moisture comes mushrooms. I was in luck because on our land was a ton of oyster mushrooms ready to be harvested. The ones we couldn’t eat right away were then dehydrated to use for soups and other recipes. Also a fun veggie to dehydrate is squash & zucchini! Scroll down to see what it looks like.

Next year we plan to start our seeds early esp the luffa, which you know I’ve been trying really hard to grow but our growing season is very short. In other news - we’ll be expanding the garden to include a chicken run that is full of fruiting trees, building out water collection and drainage systems, we’ll grow as many strawberries as possible (my favorite jam), finally making hot sauce… and much more. Can’t wait to start planning!

Let me know in the comments what you’re excited to grow or looking forward to in Spring

Last haul of the 2022 season

Dehydrated Summer Squash & Zucchini - great for soups and stews

Homemade Fire Cider for the days we need a boost in immunity or just a little extra flavor in our soups - Recipe

Some of our canned food - mostly tomato sauce and paste

Foraged Oyster Mushrooms - Our summer was so dry soI didn’t expect to see any mushrooms. These popped up at the very end of Summer after a few days of rain. The majority of these were cleaned, cut up and dehydrated for soups and stews.

Fresh Peach Tart

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

What an insane summer! Typically our April is super rainy but the summer has really soaked us. So our normal exploration on the weekends have been washed out quite regularly, which means that we haven’t been “picking our own" in quite a while! Well, ask/wish and you shall receive. We happened to be at the right place at the right time to receive a beautiful bag full of freshly picked peaches just waiting to be transformed into something sweet and delicious though I could have probably eaten each peach on their own.

We did a poll on our Instagram page to see what folks thought we should make. One of the big winners was the peach tart. Simple and sunny we found our Peach Tart recipe from Food52. I didn’t follow their crust recipe because I had plans to make pies and quiches so I just made extra pie crust but I did follow the rest.

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter surrounded by Sun Ray appetizer plates and textured side bowls