Gardening From Scratch

Onward We Go!

glean 05 Onward we go! On Friday morning three people and two trucks met in Ritzville at 9 am. Going south on 395 just beyond the Coyote Ridge Correctional Facility we turned and proceeded to the Eltopia Post Office to meet a farmland owner that Terri knows.

We drive to a nearby field that had just been harvested and stop at a big pile of sweet corn sitting on the side of the field. He asked what else we could use. We told him about the potato shortage at the food bank, and you could see the gears in his mind start to turn. Saying, “Take as much as you can use, of this corn,” he turned to Terri saying, “Come see where the other fields are”. So, Pete and I got busy filling 8-grain bags with corn (90 lbs each approx) by the time she returned.

Our next stop was at a potato field that had just finished being harvested. The crew was waiting for us by their Spudnik Potato Harvester. Wow! I want to drive a Spudnik someday. Look at the size of that machine!

glean 04 They motioned for us to pull up beside them, saying they would load our pickup till we say stop. It took about 2 seconds to fill the bed completely up with potatoes.

We drive very carefully on some dirt roads to where the onion field is next. We get to pick from the field before they harvest it this afternoon. Before we can start to pick, we must bag up 4 bags of potatoes out of our truck and transfer them to Terri’s truck. Otherwise, we don’t have enough room to haul any onions and corn.

glean 06

You can see how the onion is planted about 4 across in a 12-16 inch row. They have let the tops dry and the picking is very easy. We quickly add 6 more bags of onions (75 lbs each) to the harvest today.
Picking Onions

2,411 Pounds

glean 08 Thanks to the generosity of the farm landowner and the farmers that lease his land, we just unloaded 2,411 lbs of beautiful fresh produce at the Food Pantry this morning.

glean 07 This is only what we brought back home, Terri had a full truckload that she took to her church.

292 pounds of corn
1,815 pounds of potatoes
304 pounds of onion

The three of us who volunteered, had a blast doing this. It was a beautiful drive and the whole day was full of smiles and laughter for us all. It feels good to respond to the opportunities presented to us. GIG! Hopefully, others will see what a joy it is to participate in this kind of activity making the next opportunity even more fun.

Gleaning

Gleaning was the solution that came to mind for me (the Book of Ruth). The food bank that we volunteer for, by working in their garden, is the North County Pantry Food Pantry . It has not had any donations of POTATOES for months.

I asked my friend upstairs about that before I went to sleep that night. A couple of days later, I got a call from my friend at our previous church. At On Fire Ministries. there was a lady organizing a gleaning trip just south of Ritzville. She worked with farms there. We called her and told her of this need, so we were included in her Gleaning Trip on Friday morning.

Our initial plan was to recruit others and meet at 8 am FRIDAY morning at their church and then have all of us drive 2 hours and pick the potatoes in the field all day. We hoped to fill pick-up trucks and bring them back to their church school and our food pantry.

Volunteers?

I started asking everyone I know if they would like to join us on this adventure without getting a single volunteer at the garden or church to reply with a yes. I turned to my Facebook page, which succeeded in generating 5 likes and zero volunteers. Finally, it was posted in our community “Elk/Deer Park/Chattaroy – Neighbors Helping Neighbors Page“. This private group has 6,100 members in it and is quite active on a day-to-day basis. But, the request for help produced 4 likes and 2 comments and absolutely no volunteers. Terri was as unsuccessful as we were in getting volunteers to step up to the plate.

That didn’t stop us though. Regardless of how many did not volunteer, we were excited about this opportunity.

Harvest

The harvest doesn’t look real impressive sitting here on the kitchen countertop till you see the sizes of them compared to the size of my hand. These are oversized baking pans, so they look kind of normal but take a look at the third picture! Just slightly large aren’t they?

Potatoes

Zucchini, Yellow Crookneck Squash

Okay, the zucchini is the same way in deceit. They look small stacked there but average 3-5 lbs each. This is just 2 days from the last picking of both kinds. We are not planting this many squashes ever again.

Tomatoes

We love the sweetness of our own tomatoes. Sometimes I think there must be some sugar sprinkled on them but nope. We have a variety this year including, Early Girls, Glaciers, Beefsteak, and Large Cherry Tomatoes

Seeds

Set to dry for next year-green beans, lettuce, spinach, peaches, zucchini. We got ourselves a book about how to dry your own seeds. It has saved us a lot of money and now that we have done it a couple of years, it has become really easy. Definitely something worth looking into if you enjoy growing your own food.

peach and zuchinni seeds — peach and zucchini seeds