Guidelines: The Garden Payoff

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By Simon Ambit

With summer drawing short and fall around the corner, we get to enjoy the harvest of the garden. It’s a very rewarding time of year for those of you with tomato plants. Typically, Carbon and Emery county residents battle our nutrient sparse and alkali rich soils against drought, proper fertilization and weeds. It’s a season long battle for position and, at this time of year, the skirmishes draw to a close and the long awaited garden vegetables get to be enjoyed daily.

Like many of you, nightly main courses are complimented with ears of corn, slices of cucumber or fresh tomato salsa. It seems that just when you think the work is done and it’s all enjoyment for the rest of the season, you remember that harvest time brings canning time! At our house, we bottle a lot of tomato juice. It can be quite a bit of work, however, it is a very rewarding work.

The tomatoes are washed, cut and pressed into juice. The juice is then collected, boiled, mixed and poured into quart jars. The full jars are then pressure cooked to seal and toted downstairs to our small storage room for future consumption.

Whether it be juice, sauce, salsa or pickles, peaches and pears, you know the work that precedes the rewards. Minus the clean-up of the canning season battle front, it is a rewarding experience to saving these fresh foods for future use.

We try our best as parents to involve our children in these types of activities, from helping plant the garden to weeds and watering and from harvest and plunging tomatoes into the juicer to neatly stacked bottles on the shelf. We have an obligation to teach the future generations that to harvest we must work, and to have we must earn. There are no tasty jams in February without summer efforts and sweaty brows in September.

The law of the harvest does not simply apply to the confines of the garden. We must live by and teach the principles that working now and paying it forward, returns rewards down the road.

So, as the summer draws to a close and the apex of the harvest comes to fruition, may you enjoy fresh vegetables and canned peaches. Life is good, enjoy it daily!

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