Harvest Monday November 18, 2013

I am thankful for Daphne and Harvest Monday's. It is so great to read what is going on in other people's gardens. And it is great to get to share with others what is going on here.

We had our first killing frost this week. This seems early to me, but it may be because I have only gardened for three years. The last three years there have been no frosts before December. (I checked the Frost Date Map for Alabama and it says that our average first frost date is November 21 to 30, so I guess I was right.)

I didn't have much in the garden, since I am not doing a fall garden this year, but there was one volunteer tomato plant. I was hoping that it would have time to ripen, but the frost came. So I made green tomato pickles (from the Ball Complete Book of Home Canning). This is one of my family's new favorite recipes. I made it many times during the summer, when we had a glut of cherry tomatoes. It was easier to just pick them green and make this fantastic recipe than to try to figure out what to do with them after they ripened.

This time, I had enough to make three quarts, using jars I got when I just happened to be a the right place at the right time.      I am so excited about these pickles. We had almost used up the ones I had previously put up.

See what others are harvesting at Daphne's Dandelions.

Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Last night, I was taking my kids' friends home after dark, and happened to see a garage sale still going on. What?

I went ahead and took the kids home. When I went past the place again, they were still there. And they had canning jars. It seemed to me that they had a LOT of them in my glances as I drove. So my kids and I stopped.

I asked about the canning jars. They were waiting for someone to come back after them. They had been waiting on this person all day and were weary of waiting. "How much did they pay?"  I asked.  Oh, nothing. These people had just been going to give it to the person, but she just wouldn't come back.

I said, "I'll pay $20."  That was all the cash I had in my purse. They looked at each other and said, "Sold." They started helping me put the canning jars in my car. My kids helped. I helped. We stacked. And we stacked. And we stacked. I had no idea that there could have been THAT many when we started.

I ended up getting 126 canning jars and a brand new, unopened box of wide mouth jars and lids--for only $20.

Some of the many canning jars I got last night

It was totally AWESOME!!! I was so excited that I could hardly stand myself. And the people were glad, because it got rid of something they thought of as worthless clutter. And I paid them for it when some other person was trying to scam them into giving them for free. But wasn't willing to come back to pick them up.