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It's that time of year where the garden beds that we planted those tiny seeds start producing their big fruits. I like to garden, but I ABSOLUTELY love to "put-up" our own food, especially when it's food that we've grown ourselves. There's just something about harvesting the veggies or fruit from your own garden, and putting it into jars, knowing exactly what is in it and then after the process is all finished, standing back and looking at what i've made from our own food. That in itself is very satisfying.

This year is a bit different with our gardens, because I have the help of a very dear friend, Jane. Jane and her husband, Jamey have decided to join us on our homestead, helping us garden and farm while we (mainly Joel) helps them build their first home. We sold them an acre of our land in hopes to share our farm with them. I guess you can consider this a "commune." So, we share the homesteading responsibilities and one of the major ones being the garden.

Since I recently had Silas, who is now 5 months old, I gave Jane the majority of the garden responsibility. The reason for that being, I knew it would be a big adjustment for us to go from a family with 2 kids to now being a family with 3 kids, and I knew most of my time during the gardening months would be spent nursing an infant and trying to get a good routine down for our new, growing family.

I knew that I wouldn't have enough time or energy to make much of a garden for ourselves this summer, so who better to do it than, Jane. I am so happy to have her around. She has made us one fabulous garden! She's also stretched me and taught me to like different veggies, mostly greens. I have helped her with the garden, like planting and weeding and harvesting, but she was the master-mind behind all of it. I definitely would not have had the energy to plan the garden she has made for us. We are now getting some amazing veggies out of our garden. We actually have been for a while, because she got a good start on planting things early.

With all of that being said, the last few days has been so much fun canning our produce. I canned a bunch of pickled beets and today I will can some bread and butter pickles!! I've frozen a few qrts. of shelled peas and snow peas. I love to look at all the things that we've grown and see them made into wonderful, yummy things. I've also made a batch of strawberry and rhubarb jam. The strawberries I picked from a local farm and the rhubarb is from our farm. I love that I can have jam that doesn't cost me a thing and has no added preservatives or high-fructose corn syrup added to it.

Harvesting season is just beginning. I can't wait for the other veggies to come into maturity. I am especially excited about our pumpkins, other winter squash and onions.

There's just something about doing all of this homemaking stuff that fills my heart with joy! :)