Yummy Gardens

I learned this week that raspberry tea will help my thyroid. So, this last week, I went into my mom's garden and started stripping the raspberry leaves off of the plants. My mom helped me put them on screens to dry them. We are going to make our own raspberry tea...yippee!
My grandmother lives two houses down from my parents. I grew up running over to her house multiple times every day...especially in the summer. This picture is at her house. She is in her eighties and still has her gardens. I love visiting her.
We canned tomatoes this week. The nice thing about tomatoes is that even when they are ripe they stay on their vine...unlike peaches that fall to the ground. After you pick them, you can also leave them for a few days until you are ready to can them, unlike peaches that will continue to ripen so much that they aren't good if you leave them for too long. Plus, these are bottles of stewed tomatoes which means they can be used in spagetti sauce, soups, etc. You can use them in so many dishes.
Here's a photo of my grandmother and mother. I love these ladies.
Here's a bin of mint leaves. I am also drying these to add to my raspberry tea. Mint just makes things really tastey.

The peaches that fall to the ground and bruised and go bad quickly. I pick them up and feed them to the neighbors' horse. Notice that the fence is just two lines of string and a white line. Well, the white string has a small electrical charge running through it and the horse won't get close to it because he doesn't want a shock. This is awesome since horses like to lean on fences and end up breaking them and getting out. And we don't want this horse to get out since his field is right next to Mom's garden.
This is the dryer that we have been using to dry peaches and pears. It's very large and wonderful. Somebody actually made it. It has a heating element and fan at the bottom that push hot air up to the top. We can get six trays of fruit into the dryer.
And, of course, I have to make sure the peaches taste okay. Yep, they're good!!
And I have to taste the raspberries and make sure they taste all right...yep, they are also really good!!
These plants are producing lots and lots of raspberries. And someone has to eat them, right? That someone is me!!