I spent a good hour harvesting berries today. I am having to pick about every 2 days so that nothing goes to waste.

Today's bounty:



Yes, that's 7 pints of raspberries, 1 pint of blackberries, and 1 pint of blueberries with at least another 1/2 pint in the Ziploc baggy. And that doesn't show the half a pint of blackberries I picked and ate for my lone high carb of the day. And there are enough blackberries out there to fill another pint container, but I had filled up all of my containers and once I had them inside didn't want to go back out and pick anymore. I'll get them tomorrow. I will freeze what I pick tomorrow so I won't eat them all and will eventually have enough to make jam by saving them over the next week or so. Plus hopefully enough to freeze some extra for the year as well. It's a small stand of blackberries, about 4 feet wide by 8 feet long so it may not produce enough. The blackberries I picked today are for tomorrow's fresh eating. They are so delicious.

We were inventorying the freezers and we found about three gallons of blueberries (from our yard, so organic) from last year and some sugared strawberries (not organic) so I think I'll be making blueberry jam this week, too and Mom will be adding the frozen strawberries to her smoothies.

I wonder if there is something like freecycle (maybe tradecycle or something) where you could barter your fresh fruit you don't want more of, like extra raspberries for the fresh fruit you do want, like blackberries. Or maybe I could give away raspberry jam in exchange for fresh blackberries. I do intend to give away quite a bit of the raspberry jam I make anyway. If I can get enough blackberries I will make brambleberry jam, too, which I like an awful lot more than straight raspberries and that will help use some of them up.

I now have 1 full gallon of raspberries frozen, plus enough in another gallon baggy to make jam tomorrow. I was going to do it earlier in the week but it was just too hot. The weather has broken now, though.

We will not have to buy jam this year at all. We won't have to buy any berries for eating as we will have plenty frozen.

Yesterday we put in more romanesco broccoli on the cool side of the house, which we fenced because the chickens were trying to eat the greens before we even got them in the ground, some more yellow zucchini squash, some green pole beans that may or may not make it, but I can put some bean seeds in under their foliage to protect them from the chickens, and some green bunching onions. I have some new lettuce starts to plant in the windowboxes as those lettuces are bolting fast. The chickens will appreciate those when I pull them.

I have a large pepper plant and a large tomato plant that I rescued very cheaply from a store that was clearancing them. I think I am just going to cut the ends off the plastic pots, dig a bit down in the soil and sort of just set them in and put the dirt back around the bases. Root shocking them at this point might do more harm than good, especially since they have fruits of decent size on them.

I have broken even on what I've paid out for gardening this season if I include the fruits and pretty close even if I don't.

I am buying very little in the way of fruit at the grocery store. I did buy a Washington organic nectarine and some Washington organic pence apricots, but I will be canning apricot jam and one batch of that is enough. I have been tempted by the melons, especially the canteloupe and also the kiwis and pineapples. I hate buying outside of my foodshed but some things just don't grow in my state. Or not well. I swear I am going to buy a hardy kiwi first thing after we move and plant it, weather permitting.

Anyway, now that harvest is in full swing on the berries, I can cut about $100 out of my food budget that was going to buying fresh fruit and put it in the Freezer Fund instead. I know I will have enough berries to get me through a year by the time I am done. I know we will want other fruit throughout the year, oranges, bananas and lemons come to mind, but those will be supplemental fruits along with what I can (like Italian prunes and pears, and apple sauce). It should still cut by 3/4 my fruit portion of the food budget this year.

I would eventually like to get my fruit portion of the food budget to where we only have to buy 10% of it and the rest is all free from what we grow. I want to do that on a permanent basis, but I will have to start all over with berry canes and bushes. Oh, I can still harvest at Mom's, but I want to be self-sufficient in this area. I should probably take some cuttings now from her blueberry bushes and start rooting them. I can get a piece of willow bark or birch bark from the neighbor to make a rooting solution. Her blueberry bushes are 75 years old and are the best tasting ones out there, so I want to have those same types when we move again.

I will, however, order organic thornless blackberries from a catalogue. And plenty of them. I'm not sure I'll bother with more than transplanting a few canes of raspberries for DH. The kids don't like those ones enough to care. To them raspberries are only good for filling out smoothies when there isn't enough of the other things. And then of course I'll buy strawberry plants but that is all way in the future. I want to find out what type it is that the guy from Fir Island was growing. Those were the best I've tasted in a long time.

After my fruit is up to speed I want to start planting in sufficient quantities to get my veggies to where I can freeze and can a lot of them and root cellar the rest and make it last a year. I know that's a way's off. I don't have the soil for it here and I'd bring in good soil if needed when we move. If I am very lucky I will get my tomato supply up to where I need it with what I am growing. If not I will get a couple of bushels from one of the local organic farms. Much cheaper than buying organic sauce.

We'll see how it goes. All it takes is one more health crisis for me and my gardening goes right out the window. So let's hope that doesn't happen.