Carnie's Comments
It's a great time of year for those of us who like to eat fresh, garden produce. Gardening is a lot of work but, really, I like to think of it as a privilege. I take pleasure in growing some of my own food.
I did some growing up in a home with a big backyard. My dad used more than half of it to grow food to feed the family.
We had a strawberry patch, raspberry bushes, a large space with tomatoes, onions, peas, beans and more along with five apple trees. It was marvelous.
This time of year got busy around the house and garden with an effort to get some of the root veggies into cold storage and preserve what we could.
We all chipped in, and we'd have enough dill pickles and pickled beets to last for months.
My mom also made jars of mustard pickle. I can't remember all the ingredients, but cauliflower, onions and red peppers were included and I loved it.
There was a steady diet of apple pie and apple sauce for a few weeks too. There's nothing better than a barbecued pork chop with apple sauce, is there?
As I recall, the only thing I didn't like was one of my dad's favourites - pickled crab apples.
Mom would cook 'em up - stems on - and put 'em in the jars with vinegar and spice them with whole cloves. Those things were nasty.
Anyway, happy harvest!