Gathering A Bounty Of Blessings!

The end of summer is almost here for us in northern Minnesota.   Our summers are so short.  The leaves are already starting to turn red and yellow and orange here and there in the woods.  Crops grow quickly here, and today we gathered a bounty of fruits and vegetables!  The Lord has been so good to us and He has blessed us with such an abundance!  Every week for our Farmer's Market booth we gather almost a pick up bed full of vegetables to sell.  Today we picked the rest of our apples, and we are starting to harvest grapes, too!  We've had a problem with a fungus on our grapes for several years now.  We tried various methods of fungus control - sprays, fertilizers, adding nutrients to the soil, weed control, different watering methods - and nothing seemed to work.  We decided that if we didn't get any grapes this year, the vines were going to be torn out and we would just forget about trying to raise grapes.   With this in mind, we more or less forgot about watering and just let the vines have rain, but nothing more.   Well, that seemed to be the answer!  Perhaps we were over watering!  This year the fungus problem was minimal and we actually will have an abundance of grapes!  These are called Northern Valiant grapes and they are good for juice or jelly.   I have plenty of other jelly that I've made this summer, so this year's crop of grapes will be canned up as juice for a special treat for us for holidays.  After I extract the juice, I will can it in pints for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, our birthdays and Easter.
     In my last post I talked about our hazelnuts.  We got them all husked, and ended up with 3 1/2 lbs of nuts.  Hazelnuts are also called filberts.
     Today I also trimmed and cleaned a whole box full of garlic to use for cooking and to give away and to sell at our booth.
     This week I will need to put cabbage in the crock for sauerkraut, dig up our potatoes, and start canning tomato products.  Such a busy time!   We also will need to bottle up more honey, as we sold almost 3 cases of it at last week's market as well as 6 quarts.   We have more orders to fill.  We did end up with 350 lbs of excellent honey - another big blessing for us.   It is so rewarding to grow our own food.  And when things turn out good, we are more than thrilled.  This year I also had great success growing carnations, and Harold tried his hand at growing gladiolus flowers.   The house looks so pretty with flowers all around - another reminder of all the Lord's blessings!  Thanks be to God for another great season here at Honey B Farm.

Remember those hazelnuts from the last post?  Here is a tray of 3 1/2 pounds of them drying a little more. 

One of several baskets of grapes this year.  This is a Concord type grape called Northern Valiant.   It is good as a table grape, but is especially good for juice.   It has taken us almost 9 years to get a good bunch of grape vines going.

A box full of fresh garlic for cooking.  I grow two types - a small commercial type, and a larger type sometimes called elephant garlic.

We picked a 5 gallon bucket, plus 3 big baskets of apples today.   We already picked a couple other baskets full and processed them into dried apple slices in the dehydrator (3 day's worth of drying apple slices!).   These are Prairie Magic apples and they are huge.   This is a pie apple variety, tart for cooking and baking and making sauce.

Some of Harold's lovely gladiolus flowers.

A small bouquet of my greenhouse carnations.   I especially love the deep magenta ones.