Harvest time

This weekend we got to see the payoff for all the hard work that went into setting up the garden. We spent most of yesterday harvesting most of what was remaining - Jeff dug the potatoes, while I dug carrots and beets.  

Then we both spent a good amount of time brushing dirt off of potatoes and preparing them to be boxed up for storage. All in all, we ended up with almost 60 pounds of potatoes, 9 pounds of carrots, and 7 pounds of beets, not counting the four bags of beet greens.

Today I spent the afternoon cleaning some of the beets, cooking them, and pickling and canning them. Unfortunately, I was trying to do too many things at once, and the sugar-vinegar-spice mixture for pickling boiled over and got all over the stove and floor. Jeff came home about one minute later to see the kitchen in a total state of entropy, and by that time I was so tired from all the work that I had done that I really wasn't any use in cleaning it up. So Jeff cleaned while I ordered pizza. There is something kind of funny about spending an entire weekend harvesting food we had grown ourselves, and preserving it so that we can enjoy it for months to come, only to end up ordering pizza  :-)