another harvest

These August days are long and busy with the boiling canning pot going every day and my outdoor canning kitchen working overtime. The Lord has blessed us with abundance in our own garden and lots of local produce this season. In addition to canning our own garden surplus we've been busy picking from local farms and also lots of wild berries. Our food budget is way down this month as so much of what we're eating we've grown or raised ourselves. Just yesterday I embarrassed myself (and my kids!) by gleaning apples from a tree on public common ground in my friend's posh Portland neighborhood. Many apples were already rotting on the ground and apparently no one in that neighborhood cared much about picking or canning the tart apples. This morning while light rain fell outside the girls and I cooked those apples slowly over the stove top until they melted into a thick, delicious apple butter. Lunch was hot apple butter spread thick on homemade cinnamon raisin bread with scrambled eggs fresh from the coop out back. A few yellow pear tomatoes picked by West rounded out the meal. For me days spent like this and meals built from what we've grown or made ourselves is what makes life fulfilling, blissful and sweet.

A few weeks ago we signed up with Salem Harvest a great local organization that organizes harvests or "gleanings" of local farms that have a surplus of crops once the farmers are through harvesting. Volunteers from the organization like us come in a pick the leftover crops and get to keep half (for free!) and donate the other half to the local food share. It's a win-win and because we are in the valley where farms are everywhere there are harvest going almost everyday this month. Blueberries, plums, apples, cherries, and on it goes. Tonight we joined an apple harvest on a beautiful piece of land outside West Salem. While the sun set over the hills we laughed with fellow harvesters, the kids ran through the corn fields and Shane and I picked buckets and buckets of apples, about 200 pounds worth. Tomorrow I'll begin the process of making applesauce, apple pie filling, dried apples and more apple butter. I can hardly wait!