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A warm welcome from British Columbia! :)

Almost all of the beans here are now packed up in seed envelopes or jars too. For some varieties there are large jars full of dry beans for cooking; those will go to the pantry so we can enjoy them over the winter in soups, chilis, hummus, and burritos. Each of the small jars are filled with...

Makes total sense. Your practical explanations of events like this are such a valuable education for a city kid like me. 😉

We rented a stump grinder once as well, with excellent results.

Hmmm...is there any chance that it is elephant garlic (which is not a 'true'garlic but rather a member of the leek family)? The cloves of elephant garlic can be absolutely massive.

Such beautiful cloves! I just spent the past two hours cracking bulbs in preparation for planting garlic, and like you I grow cultivars that came without a pedigree. One is a remarkably vigorous large garlic that has been grown by a friend for decades; he thinks it may be a Purple Stripe or...

Hopefully all of the mariners heeded the warnings and brought their ships to safety, since the intense low pressure system was located well offshore. Evidently we would have had massive damage had this bomb cyclone made landfall. Thankfully that was not the case. We lost power for about six...

You're brave. Yesterday I brought in some late harvested bean pods for drying, and tiny bugs were crawling and hopping all over my kitchen counter. After that there is no way I would consider bringing a potted plant in from outdoors. Too risky.

We woke up to our first dusting of snow! It'll melt shortly, and then we'll be hustling to unload a yard of 2-year old composted manure to top dress the garlic beds. I hate to be running a heavy wheelbarrow over our water-logged lawn, but there is no other option. We got 39cm(15") of rain in...

I found a couple of ripe orange cherry tomatoes on a volunteer plant growing in a pot on the north side of the house. They tasted pretty good, and there are still more green tomatoes on the vine. Hours later it dawned on my that this plant is still producing in mid-November located in one of...

This is definitely a big topic of conversation at the moment, with predictions of downed trees and power outages. Tomorrow is supposed to be fairly nice, so before this weather event hits I need to focus on getting my garlic planted. Then Wednesday we can hunker down and stay inside where it's...

Yet another tuna pizza, this time garnished with a few strips of homegrown Alpine Poblano pepper, as well as Fiachetto di Manduria tomato halves that were dried in the oven in the summer and then frozen in glass jars. I had heard that dried tomatoes were good as a pizza topping but had never...

I can hardly wait to see which names you come up with for the little brown twin lambs. They are delightful! Maybe Ginger and Snap? Copper and Penny? Cocoa and Puff? Whiskey and Brandy? Caramel and Toffee? Chai and Latte? One of my friends had three lambs and she named them Shish, Ka, and...

I can't get over how pristine many of the peppers seeds are this year; the one shown here had fewer than ten seeds that I culled. Typically I wait for the fruit to mature and turn red before saving seed, but this Alpine Poblano that was harvested green a few weeks ago. Some of the seeds look...

Carrots were a challenge to figure out; it took years for us to get a reliable crop consistently. In our area I think it comes down to timing (and selecting the right variety, to match the season of harvest). These ones were started a couple of weeks after our last frost. Sowing in late June...

Autumn carrot harvest

We roasted a bunch of the smallest ones whole last night, and they were yummy. Hopefully there will be carrot cake in our future too!

Maybe it looks odd because it's all snuggled into the leaf. In person it's kind of cute and small. 😊

Finally one of the Grandma Rivera's Lima bean pods has a respectable 'baby bump'. After many months of waiting I have lowered my expectations and am very grateful to see the potential for harvesting a dry seed-- even if it's only one. For now the plants are nestled under cover of the overhang...

Five months later and there are still stunning Siracha peppers ripening on those bargain plants that I picked up in mid-June. The Shepherd peppers were doing well too, until the other day when I noticed all of the peppers that are pointing downwards are rotting. There is one upward facing...