I have been on vacation. I'm not an experienced blogger yet so I'm not sure if you can take vacation from blogging but I did! It's important to take a break and let your beautiful YOU rest... With that being said, the summer is officially over and we start the fall season. Yes, I'll miss the hot days but there's beauty in fall too. We'll start with my garden.
I can't say I took good care of it, yet I did harvest some vegetables. Of course the most success I had with the tomatoes and I'm not sure if this is because they're easy or whatever else but I pick them up every day for my lunch and/or dinner salads. There's not enough though to make any homemade tomato sauce unfortunately. I also got my bell peppers that I grew from the seeds. Squashes unexpectedly came up nicely too.
I associate this season with my early Polish village farmers life and the type of fun we had as kids. After the grains were harvested, cleaned and brought to the barn for the animals to eat over the winter, us kids would play in these heaps of grain and climb on the piles of the hay bales. What fun! I remember picking up potatoes where all of the family would come over to help and the kids had their competition who can clean up a row faster or who can collect more potatoes.
After the crops were harvested the women would make what we call a wreath constructed of welded metal (I remember my dad doing this) and decorated with the stalks of grain, flowers and there are vegetables inside. On the picture I'm on the very right and the lady with the biggest smile that's my grandmother. That was how we celebrated the harvest!
Since I became a mother myself and teaching my kids is important to me, I think of these young years and these grandmothers who tried to pass on the harvesting traditions. I don't think grandmothers these days can be successful anymore. Not that it is their fault, more the fact that the art of the farming in ways I used to know doesn't exist anymore. Nowadays harvesting looks very different. Since there's a huge difference between my tiny garden and the real harvesting time, we go to farms to observe the life that happens there.
This is Wolcott Mill Farm Center and there's a red barn of course. As soon as you get off your vehicle you can smell you're on the farm. Seeing people working there you're also reminded that farming is a hard work (makes me feel better about my gardening). God please bless the farmers and their work! Even though the ways of farming changed significantly it's still them who feed us!
My intension was to take some pictures of the crops but as I'm learning to like animals (that's thanks to Zuzanna and the post about Beautiful Poland) I took pictures of animals before the vegetables...
Gooses were chilling in the sun and cows having their breakfast. They were difficult models I must say.
There are two things I'm looking forward to that I have never done yet. Beauty of the gardening is that you're constantly learning and trying new things. First is a corn maze, so far there's abundant of corn fields.
And secondly drying the vegetables seeds so I can plant them next year! Even though I might not be successful with this, it gives me a good feeling of self-sustainability and continuity.
Happy harvest, Beautiful!
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