Building beds....raised beds.

I've had a garden wherever I lived whenever I could.  When we bought our house a couple years ago it was a forgone conclusion that I would be trying to put some kind of garden together.  I'm a food grower. No flowers for me.  Not that there's anything wrong with that at all.  My neighbor has a beautiful yard full of all sorts of flowers and flower beds.  But for me I'd rather produce something I can use. It's the utilitarian in me.  We moved into our house in the mid December in 2010, so when the snow was finally gone I started working on a couple raised beds.  I really wanted to make them cheap and from recycled stuff, but mainly cheap.  So I started by building my first raised bed out of used pallets.  It didn't turn out too bad, but it is kinda ugly.

I put a pea fence in the middle and have a nice growing area on either side.

Then while looking on the craiglist free stuff page I came across what I would be building lots of stuff with...window crating. One of the Safelite stores in town usually gets a big shipment twice a year and they have tons of this stuff.  It's also great because it's only stapled together so getting the boards apart without destroying them is pretty easy and then it's just taking the time to remove all the staples.  But you end up with a nice piece of 1 x 4 pine in varying lengths.  

There's a couple reason I built the beds so high. One was to keep my dog out of them, second it was easier on the back to weed, and third I had bought a large load of top soil and needed to put it somewhere.  But they also give me great root depth for my carrots

Winter already?

Well life on the farm is slowing down.  The last two weeks have been a flurry of activity with trying to finish the insulating of my foundation and reaping the crops.

The girls have been helping out.

I didn't take too many pictures of the harvest or the clean up, but we had a nice harvest of carrots, potatoes, green beans, beats, turnips, parsnips, peas, zucchini, various squashes, kale, salad greens and surprisingly tomatoes this year.  The disappointments were our cucumbers, onions, and lemon squash.

I think we ended up with close to 50 pounds of taters this year.  We have a variety of Yukon golds, reds, fingerlings and some purples (not in picture).

I think having the cucumbers in the greenhouse is what did them in since it was so hot and sunny this summer, I think they couldn't take the heat.

We only managed to get 19 sockeye salmon dipnetting this year, but last year we filled our card and still have a ton of fish left over.  Here is a double batch of smoked sockeye we made up to eat, send to family and take to parties.  The jalapeno is my favorite, we also add some sweet chili sauce and Sirachi sauce to a few few piece when we vac pack it to add some more variety to the plain.  We also have sun dried tomato and garlic in the picture.  I like to smoke the fish with the toppings on so that they get some of the smokey flavor as well.  It works really well with the Jalapeno and if you vac pack it after it's done and let it sit in the fridge for a few days the meat really absorbs the flavor.  I also scored quite a bit of halibut from a friend this summer and with all the harvest from the yard the freezer is full. :)

After all the work we've put into the house and garden the last two weeks I think it's time for a nap.

Curly agrees.