Our weekend was one of trying to get some rest, and trying to take care of some things we really needed to do.

First, we fully opened the beehives, making sure each one had a colony that was strong and healthy. If you have not had the opportunity to see a beehive in action, bees are amazing! Here we were, pulling frames in the hive, cleaning the hive, and the thousands of bees basically ignored us.

Then we needed to spend time in the gardens. We weeded, pulled dead plants, and then harvested as needed.

One of the things we needed to harvest were Sam’s hot peppers. Many of you know that the last Mother’s Day of Sam’s life, he brought me two hot pepper plants, knowing how much I like spicy food, and how much I like to make my own lacto-fermented hot sauce. After his death, I tried saving some of their seeds, first time I’d ever done that with anything other than pumpkins, and amazingly, the seeds germinated the next spring. Each year now, I keep some of the seeds, and replant them, and we all refer to them as “Sam’s hot peppers.” Here is a picture of one of the plants:

We carefully picked each of the bright red peppers, and in the end, we had huge bucket full of them. Aren’t they beautiful?

Then we had other things to harvest. We harvested one row of potatoes, our sweet potato plot, cucumbers, bell peppers, patty pan squashes, and basil.

We also picked what may be the last of our plum tomatoes. After that was all done, the dehydrator is full of basil and hot peppers, the tomatoes were pureed and made into sauce, and we made a huge bowl of pico de gallo to have with our quesadillas stuffed with our vegetables.

By the end of the day, we were tired, filthy, and proud. How lucky we are that we share the love of farming as a couple, and how fortunate we are to be able to spend time digging in the earth.