Every time I turn around, I am hauling a wheelbarrow full of produce out of the garden. If I miss it for a few days, I’m almost nervous as to what I’ll find — tomatoes rotting on the ground, green beans over a foot long, squash growing in the herb garden. Sigh. But we keep plugging away and bring it into the kitchen. Many bags have made it to the food pantry and friends. But a lot of it ends up in jars or the freezer.

Every weekend, one entire day is dedicated to processing this bounty.

LOTS OF CHOPPING, SEEDING, CORING AND PEELING.

Always selecting the finest ingredients.

In the past two weekends, we made 32 pints of salsa. We’ve pickled 64 pints of pickles and have frozen about 30 lbs of beans. We have also frozen zucchini and corn and pickled beans.

We used a variety of recipes to test in our kitchen. We’ll let you know the results.

If you’re going to play with water, you’re going to get wet.

Learning how to make bubbles.

Grandpa, this is pretty cool.

Big kick, big ball.

On to the cows. Aaron really likes to go moo and listen to the cows respond.

They are very interesting to watch, but what about the babies?

Finding the babies.

Who are as curious about them as they are about the baby cows.

It becomes a stare down.

Enough of the cows…for now.

We found an area on the forest floor that was filled with Chanterelles. Granted, the majority of them were covered with dreaded slugs, but there were still enough left behind for us to share.

Some of them were a really nice size. This one, without slugs, is about the size of Chuck’s palm.

They are a beautiful mushroom.

Our bounty was good and by the time we got home, we had a plateful.

The next step was sauteing them with garden garlic, mushrooms and onions. (Tina, we’re getting closer to that hunt/gathered meal.)

Fresh out of the garden for the event. The garlic has been drying for weeks.

They made a wonderful topping for a grilled pizza.

Add the mozzarella and voila — dinner. It was WONDERFUL!

In anticipation of Aaron’s weekend visit, Chuck is building a new toy. Aaron has an obsession with balls and together they discovered the excitement of putting a ball one place and it returning to another.

Chuck attempts to teach Aaron the dynamics of this contraption.

The ball goes in one end, drops down and travels back to the beginning.

What fun, he had two spots to drop the ball. Now he had to just figure out where it would end up.

In the top.

Where did it go?

Out the bottom.

And again.

One vegetable that has managed to fight off insects, slugs and fungus is our cucumbers. And boy are they happy this year. It seems I could pick a basket a day and still find more cucumbers. But what does one do with so many?

These cucumbers are from seedsavers and are a pickling cucumber.

The answer to my cucumber problem—pickle.

I have never made pickles before. I have watched my mother make them and it always seemed like a lot of work. I don’t have many little cucumbers, but I gathered what I could and thought I’d pickle these.

Then while reading lots of recipes online, I realized I could make pickles in a day or in two to eight weeks. I didn’t have the ingredients necessary for refrigerator pickles, so I made the kind that sit on the shelf for a few months and you hope for the best.

Several of the recipes called for a grape leaf in the jar to make crispy pickles. We have wild grapes, so some of my jars have grape leaves and some do not.

Wild grape vines.

Wild grape leaves are three-lobed with toothed edges. There are many things you can do with these leaves. Check out the wild foods website.

This is the basic recipe I followed:

• 12 cups water
• 4 cups vinegar
• 1.5 T canning salt
• Some pickling spice

In the jars I put:

• Fresh dill and dill heads
• Garlic from my garden
• Whole or sliced cucumbers
• More dill and garlic

I topped off the cucumbers with the liquid, put on the lids and boiled under water for 15 minutes.

Here’s a jar with a grape leaf.

And ta da …pickles. If these turn out, I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

Chuck “Papa” and Aaron have discovered that anything can be a hat. But nothing is as special as this one.

After sporting the stylin’ hat, he created the rolling game.

And then there was the pushing game.

Back to the hat.

What’s this? Another hat?

Double hats. Priceless.

Tonight we had our first green bean feast. Actually they were not all green. We had some purple speckled beans as well. But it is nice to know that green beans are here for the eating.

We have more cilantro than I know what to do with. If anyone has ideas, please send them to me.

The pickling cucumbers are taking over a lot of territory. I need to keep an eye on these guys or my tomatoes will be in for a challenge.

Peppers gone wild. It has been about 10 days since I took this photo and my peppers have gone crazy. The plants are not that impressive, but they are loaded with different types of peppers.

So far the only tomatoes consumed have been cherry. But the plants look pretty good. I do have to take a lot of leaves away because of early blight. This Monday I will dedicate to blight eradication.

Timing is everything and the books tell you to wait until the plant is 50% dead, or is that 60% or perhaps 30%. The longer you wait, the tastier the garlic. If you’re too early, the garlic won’t last as long. If you wait too long, the garlic skins dissolve and no longer hold the bulb together. There is a delicate balance. I planted five different varieties of garlic. I did not realize the grew at different rates. So we ended up with early garlic, perfect garlic and late garlic. But they are all beautiful bulbs.

Here’s hoping we have a year’s supply of garlic.

What a glorious bulb!