The Modern Victory Garden

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!    

I did almost no fresh harvesting this week, so my Harvest Monday post will be brief and to the point.   On Sunday, I managed to actually weigh and photograph our almost daily raspberry harvest before they were once again gobbled up so I have those to report this week – all ¼ pound of them!  

Our greens and overwintered root crops are doing fine, but we seemed to be more interested in using stored and preserved items this week.   I did harvest some kale and broccoli leaves/stems that were fed to the chickens – but none of those were included in the weekly harvest tally.   I also harvested some fresh chives on Sunday but it did not round to a ¼ pound in weight so it also did not make the tally.   As a result, this is not a very exciting week for the Harvest Monday post.                        

Totals for the week of November 1st through November 7th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Berries (raspberry) 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 0.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 438.75 lbs                

Eggs harvested this week - 36                    

The garden is buttoned down for the winter and other than some watering of container plants in the shop and greenhouse and light harvesting tasks – there really is not much that needs to be done.   Instead my focus much of the past weekend was on getting the kitchen pantry thoroughly cleaned and restocked, cleaning the oven inside and out, and getting the guest bath and bedroom ready for holiday visitors with fresh linens and bedding.         

While driving home from work on Friday evening, I heard a segment on NPR highlighting a recipe called Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good.   It sounded wonderful and I realized I had everything needed to make it - so it became our Sunday dinner menu.   I used one of the medium/small sugar pie pumpkins, some fresh harvested chives, and garlic from our garden.   The chives and garlic were combined with dried bread cubes, dried cranberries (my variation on the recipe), cheese cubes, crisp bacon cut into bite size pieces, and a little sage seasoning – tossed to mix and then placed inside of a pumpkin that had all the guts and seeds removed.  Over all of this stuffing mixture some heavy cream mixed with just a dash of nutmeg was poured and then the stem/cap was put back on the pumpkin as a lid. This was then placed in a baking dish and put Into a preheated 350 degree oven and baked for approximately 2 hours. Cut it into quartered slices and served while still quite warm from the oven. Heavenly!        

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener