First Freeze

Last night was the first freeze of this fall. We scrambled to get the garden ready -- since we had just returned from two weeks away at the Feast (wonderful time!) It is supposed to get even colder tonight, before warming up again for a few days.

Mostly we had a multitude of green bell peppers to pick - of all sizes. Although our peppers were very slow to produce this year, they really took off in the last few weeks, and we've had more than we could imagine from six plants! The photo on this post is the pickings from one day just before we left for Feast. Since returning home, we had multiple times that many!

The turnips are looking wonderful (and the freeze shouldn't hurt them). We also cut our fall crop of leaf lettuce. We still have fall radishes and beets in the ground. We will just allow the green tomatoes on the vine to freeze, and call it a year on them. We still have several other things to do in order to properly "winterize" the garden -- mulch around the asparagus; harvest the horseradish, spread manure and the bedding from the chicken house, etc. There is much work to be done in the garden before the first snow falls.

While we were away camping for nearly two weeks, we took with us some of our crop of potatoes, onions and bell peppers, and that made for several excellent skillet meals over the campfire. It is wonderful to have the produce of your own land to enjoy and share!