Today we enjoyed our first substantial harvest of summer garden produce.

It seems that it all came on at once!

This afternoon was spent harvesting what you see in the photo above. We are so glad to see the summer fruits arrive!

We have been watching the tomatoes grow on the vine. Most of them are still green but this week some of the outside tomatoes have been starting to change color. What a sight to behold!

The size of some of these tomatoes are incredible! Wow!

But the greenhouse tomatoes... they are another story. They sure did climb nicely!

These tomatoes are ahead and have been ripening nicely. We have been keenly watching the clusters turn red the last few weeks. Today... finally today.. we could not take it any longer!

In the garden its time to pull up the first wave of carrots! We caught a few starting to bolt last week in the dry summer heat and they were already getting woody. Time to yank 'em out!

I am impressed by the size of the carrots. When we arrived here the clay soil was soggy and wet. We did not want to turn the soil and compact it but we also did not want to wait to plant. It would have been nice if we could have fluffed up the beds for the carrots. But alas with a thick clay soil, they did just fine!

These carrots came from a farm I volunteered for in Washington 2 years ago. The seeds traveled with me and found a happy place in the soil :)

We enjoyed discovering our first Romanesco (perhaps only) shown here with some broccoli sprouts and a dahlia.

The beans! Oh my goodness the beans! We have been watching them form on the bushes and noticed the other day that it would be a good time to get some young green beans.

Under the big leaves it turns out the beans had been modestly hiding their hard work and there lay a plethora of beans to be found!

Wowee! These are Kentucky Wonder beans I acquired from a seed breeder in Northern Washington at a seed swap two years ago. I sure am glad to be growing these beans. They are fast and solid producers already... and they are hinting at more abundance to come.

Here is the bean patch those beans came from. I plunked the beans in amongst dahlia seedlings and spiderflower starts. Turns out they are good companions because the dahlias and spiderflowers shoot up over the beans.

This is our second tomatillo harvest! The beautiful berries are swelling in their husks.

I am amazed at how well the tomatillos grow with corn! They love the scaffolding and shade that the corn plants provide and eagerly grow up alongside the corn in a very gentle loving way :) Our tallest tomatillo is already 5 feet! Looking forward to harvesting more of these delicious fruits.

On the other side of the garden our Hungarian yellow wax peppers are picking up speed and busting out peppers. I am really impressed with these peppers! We acquired the seed from a seed swap here in Oregon earlier this spring. Since planting out the peppers we learned that the Hungarian yellow peppers are known for being fast growers and quick to produce. They really live up to their reputation! Out of the 9 or so types of peppers that we are growing this year they grew large quite quickly and were the first to produce in numbers.

This is our second harvest from these deliciously spicy peppers.

Nearby the new Lovage plants are big enough to start harvesting small quantities. If you are not familiar with Lovage I highly recommend trying it. As an herb the flavor is completely unique but I compare it to a strong flavored celery crossed with parsley.

The best thing about Lovage is that it is a perennial and subsequent years after your first planting lovage plants will produce large quantities! For some families one mature plant would be enough for your wildest desires. A few lovage plants would produce enough to share with friends :)

Meantime we are picking blackberries regularly and in addition to jamming them and hamming out on them we have started drying them as well. I tasted a few of the first to dry today and they were really good! They would be good with cereals/yogurt in the winter, trail food, baking, cooking or just plain old snacks.

Wow! With all this food coming in at once it is quite a change of pace. We are so grateful to have this good food to eat and to enjoy the spoils of our labor and mother nature's amazing ability to nurture and grow!

Luckily we are going to visit family this week and so this harvest comes at an opportune time. We will be able to share this beautiful nutritious food with our loved ones.

In the meantime we made a meal to celebrate with ourselves. A celebration of life, hard work and appreciation of nature's abundance.

There is so much more going on in the garden that we want to share with you! We are looking forward to sharing more photos and garden stories in the near future. In the meantime I wish you abundance in your lives!