Harvest Time

“Harvest home, harvest home!

We’ve plowed, we’ve sowed,

We’ve reaped, we’ve mowed,

And brought safe home,

Every load”

_Harvest Home Song

The garden crops have been put up for some time now. This was our third gardening season at Crippen Creek and definitely our best one thanks to the hoophouse. Our eggplant that took best in show in the Wahkiakum County Fair became ratatouille and eggplant parmigiana. The tomatoes became roasted tomato sauce and salsa.

The chickens are in the freezer and today we completed the harvest with the slaughter of the pigs.

When you are involved in raising your own food, especially livestock, it changes your relationship with food.

To quote Wendell Berry, "Some I know, will think of it as bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude." Although the harvesting of the pigs was tinged with a little sadness, we take solace in the fact that we raised them with the best care possible and that they were dispatched without any trauma.