Well we are home from our time away and buried under the effects of being gone a week.  This is what a week away from the farm in early August looks like…

I washed 1,213 eggs in the last two days.  My husband asked me if I had nightmares about eggs last night.  Wouldn’t surprise me!  We wash all our eggs by hand in the kitchen sink and lay them out to dry on the counters before packing cartons. 

My cucumber trellis has been a very effective way of growing cucumbers. The vines have grown almost all the way over the arch. 

If you’ve never grown cucumbers you might not know that once the fruit comes on, it grows fast. So a week away left me with some ginormous cucumbers. Not ideal but I will figure out something to do with them. Maybe some pickle relish. Send me other ideas!

My tomato plants were heavy with green fruit when we left and so, as I thought would happen, I came home to pounds and pounds of ripe tomatoes. 

You can see that the Gold Medal and Cherokee Purple plants have been most productive so far. 

Check out this Gold Medal. It is bigger than my entire outstretched hand!  Wonder what it will taste like.  

I think I am going to start using my tomatoes with salsa. I make an amazing salsa that starts by roasting the tomatoes. 

Tomorrow I have peppers, beans, and ground cherries to harvest then the preservation fest begins. 

It is nice to get away from time to time but maybe next year I will try to plan our vacations at a slower time of year so coming home might be a little less overwhelming.