This wasn’t the best year for our gardens. We did have plenty of lettuce and spinach and a nice jag of cherry tomatoes. Our butternut squash seems to be producing well. We had some beautiful broccoli and cauliflower plants that yielded a modest amount. But we had lots of failures. No string beans. Virtually no snow peas. Cabbage failed to produce anything but a few worm-eaten heads. Our one nice heirloom tomato plant produced one solitary tomato, but the day I decided it was perfect to pick, I discovered it had mysteriously disappeared. We did, though, have plenty of herbs. We dried sage and hand-rubbed it to a fine powder. We made a batch of mixed herbs with basil, parsley, thyme, and rosemary. Bill made jars of sun-dried cherry tomatoes packed in olive oil. The last few weeks has been a flurry of canning. From the Amish in the neighboring valley we were able to buy produce and make fresh tomato sauce, spiced plum jam, and after a marathon, 12-hour session, the most magical tomato jam.
So despite the drought, the bumper crop of bunnies, the mislabeled vegetable plants, and the curious shortage of canning lids, we took what our garden gave us. We made the best of it. And we’ll be enjoying the lessons learned until next spring.