Our Vegetable Garden:
The local “slow food” movement spreading throughout the
country has inspired us to ever increase the size of our
vegetable garden and our orchard trees. The taste of fresh
fruits and veggies, eaten raw or cooked just hours after
harvest, is a real taste treat. Each year we (mostly Marion
who is the certified Green Thumb) plant about 10 varieties
of tomatoes, 3 or 4 different peppers, a couple of different
cucumbers, peas, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lots
of varieties of lettuce, squash, three or four varieties of
potatoes (Tom’s job), corn, onions, leeks, garlic, etc. Add
to that two varieties of strawberries, about a dozen
blueberries, a half dozen currants, hardy kiwi fruit,
gooseberries, and a huckleberry, plus lots of raspberries
and you can see we can feed ourselves from our garden.
Marion loves to plant flowers intertwined with all the
vegetables and has more gladiolas, peonies, dahlias,
nasturtiums, etc. than you can count. We have over 120
lavender plants just for the sheer beauty and fragrance the blooms add to
the landscape. |
To top it off, we have a couple of cherry trees, a peach,
two pears, three plums, three figs, two apples, and two
newly planted chestnuts.
We also raise laying hens.
We normally have between 8 and 12 birds who produce about a
half dozen wonderful eggs per day. They are pastured in an
area where we have about 25 olive trees. They eat grass,
worms, much of the produce from the garden that doesn’t look
nice enough for the table, and some commercial feed. We
never knew how good eggs could taste before Henrietta, Ruby,
Babbs, Buffy and the other girls started producing for us.
We do not have a rooster and we remain friends with most of
our neighbors.
Western Oregon is a wonderful place to
garden as most fruits and vegetables can be grown here quite
successfully. We love to share our harvest with friends and
neighbors, and we freeze much of our bounty for hearty
soups, stews, and sauces throughout the winter.
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