Jess Troyer

On Wednesday last week we got a light early frost. I noticed it out the bedroom window in the morning. When I returned home from work that evening I looked out the window at the small raised bed garden we started this year. It was obvious the garden had been the recipient of the early frost, all the leaves were near black and quite twisted.

When the weekend arrived I decided it was time to pick the remaining fruit and vegetables and call it a season. This year we had gotten a pretty late start with the beds only barely completed by the beginning of July. So after a short jaunt to the local Home Depot we came home with four tomato plants, three early girl and one cherry tomato, a zucchini, an acorn squash, two Anaheim peppers, and some squash.

The bounty from the two small raised beds quite exceeded our expectations. The tomatoes were exceptionally large for early girl as you can see in the picture below.

We now have more tomatoes, peppers, squash and zucchini than we can shake a stick at. I have begun the process of canning up the tomatoes in various styles, whole, crushed, sauce with garlic and herb and some very simple salsa bases. The process will luckily be ongoing so that I don’t have to do them all at once since many are still ripening in the downstairs windows.

Check out the rest of the pictures in the harvest album.

Yeah!

We are getting ready to head out again on another vacation. This time we are taking our little PUP ( popup ) down the Oregon coast for a little more than a week.

Our first stop will be a KOA in Lincoln City for one night. Then one night at Beverley Beach State Park. ( it was a pain in the ass trying to reserve camping spots only one week in advance… hence the one night stay at the KOA. ) The next two days we are spending at Sunset Bay State Park. On Wednesday we are heading all the way down to Gold Beach, OR to spend the rest of the week with family. It will be a two day drive back home so I also got the following Monday off. We will leave Sunday morning and stay in Portland before heading home on Monday.

We hope to do a whole lot of relaxing. We are bring what we need to try to get some clamming and crabbing done since none of us have ever done that. The kids and I are bringing kites. The kids have a nice borrowed skim board and I hope too pick one up for me while we are down there.

Should be a good time. We will get up some pictures when I have an internet connection again.

We flew back into Spokane via Seattle on Tuesday. I had Wednesday off but am back to work for Thursday and Friday.

I think we all need a vacation from the vacation. We had a great time and got to see and do a ton of stuff. Luckily only two days of work and it is the weekend. Next week will be a split week also with the forth of July on Wednesday.

Glad to be back… I think I still have a few more pictures to upload but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.