What do mountains, gardens, and my soon-to-be eight-year-old little girl all have in common? Every day spent basking in their beauty is sure to be a wild and unpredictable ride.
As homesteaders, it’s all too easy to focus on the problem points of the season.
“Too cold for cukes!”
“Watching my green tomatoes this year is like waiting for the pot to boil.”
“The loopers got to the cabbage patch again. At least something got to enjoy them.”
“I don’t know what I’m growing out there; strawberries or slugs.”
“The only thing messier than my garden these days is the weather!”
My tongue slipped into many such grumblings this past growing season. In addition to making me sound about ninety-years-old, these gripes had a cumulative effect on my outlook post over my garden. In fact, it wasn’t until the harvest was nearly finished for the year that I suddenly saw all the bounty coming in through that front door in a fresh, golden light; a light that spilled through the entryway over a truly littered front mat.
The parade of red, orange, and green painted an epiphany for me of my little life: Not everything can thrive in the same season.
I remember decades ago reading some silly little joke about motherhood on the internet that went something like this:
Do you want to be present with your kids? Want to make home-cooked meals every night? Want to have a strong marriage with regular date nights? Want to be an involved friend and neighbor? Want to be successful in the workplace? Want to be fit and prioritize your exercise? Want to travel? Cool. Now, pick three.
At the time, a dismissive chuckle is about all that was elicited from me by that tongue-in-cheek paragraph. Over the years, however, the humor in it for me has faded behind its truths. After nearly twelve years of motherhood, I have realized that indeed, I can only do a few things well at a time. I’ve struggled for years with the question, “What should I give up? What should I let go of?” Many times I’ve considered quitting the homestead, or homeschooling, or my blog, or my writing ventures in general, or giving up on a tidy house. But each time I have held something up to the light, considering what it would mean to release it to the wind, I see before me, haloed in an illumination of sun, an unmistakable beauty. Consequentially, I have never succeeded in dropping any one of them to the dust.
I must conclude that every trinket in my basket is something which I truly, dearly love. In short, I love my life! Isn’t that a lovely discovery? I cherish homeschooling our kids, and growing our food, and cooking it up, and eating it all with friends and family. (Ok, I don’t love cleaning it all up afterwards, but I hate the mess more than I hate the cleaning, so it stays too.) I love sun-filled, outside days, and rainy, indoor days. I am inspired by bright, lush summers and deep, snowy winters. Whatever the season, and whatever the weather, I then relish writing down all the favorites and fancies I’ve enjoyed. How could I drop any of these things? How can someone choose between their lovely friends, the blooms in the garden, or the colors in the rainbow?
And so, it’s all stayed, week after week, month after month, year after year. However, I haven’t always thrived at everything I do all at the same time. More truthfully, I’ve never done so and I don’t think I ever will. In less riddled language, I have found that I simply cannot be an involved mom, wife, daughter, friend, educator, cook, writer, reader, gardener, and housekeeper all in the same hour or day. Even covering all that ground in a single week is a tall order. And so, I have learned (slowly) to block schedule my various callings and passions all in the name of love, albeit crazy love.
This past growing season, a new layer was added to the joke-turned-true-life-creed above. Somewhere, through the overwhelm and exhaustion of summer, I made the connection between this basket of trinkets I’ve been carrying around for a decade to my color-bursting garden basket.
Indeed, if I harvested one thing this year, it was the realization that life is truly, in every season, in every characteristic, a garden. No two summers in the garden are exactly the same; yet every one of them is bountiful in its own way.
There are spinach springs and there are sugar-snap springs.
Either way, there will be shoots of green.
There are pumpkin-patch autumns and carrot-bed autumns.
At any rate, orange is to be seen.
There are salsa summers and there are apple summers.
Just the same, there will always be red.
If all else fails, there should be piles of zucchini.
Thank goodness there is sure to be bread.
There are heaps of potatoes or gluts of green tomatoes.
Either way, there will be something to fry.
There are huckleberry brambles and strawberry scrambles.
Regardless, there will surely be pie.
Best in Harvest -2026
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#7 in Harvest: PEACHES (in Montana! Just sayin’…)
We harvested an entire box of peaches off this five-year-old tree! This is a huge milestone for our little family farm. They were also, hands down, the most delicious peaches any of us have ever tasted.
#6 in Harvest: PEAS
Green peas delivered in purple pods are a particular pleasure.
#5 in Harvest: BERRIES & GRAPES
In a strange absence of huckleberries this year, we harvested baskets upon baskets of strawberries, raspberries, mulberries, gooseberries, currants, and even one basket of grapes!
#4 in Harvest: CARROTS
The carrots pictured above were just one of three harvests!
To keep carrots fresh and crisp through spring: We take the tops off our carrots, keep them dirty, and then place them into boxes lined with a towel or blanket, which we tuck them in with before placing them into storage refrigerators.
#3 in Harvest: HERBAL TEA
The herbal tea harvest was incredible this year. For our full tutorial with the list of everything we grow for steeping, check out this post: 🌼Bud to Brew🫖 Herbal Tea Tutorial for sipping pretty all year long!
#2 in Harvest: APPLES
This was the first apple harvest that yielded our entire year supply of sliced freezer apples (for crisps and crumbles) as well as applesauce!! This has me hoping on this prayer: that the future may hold cider-pressing parties.
#1 in Harvest: BEAUTY
As is often the case up on our little mountain, the first snow arrived before the first heavy frost which makes for a few days of incredible, eye-popping color. Bounty, indeed.
All things bright and beautiful,
All *harvests* great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all!
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Thank you for reading and following, dear friends! I hope each of you enjoys a lovely, cozy, restorative winter and holiday season!
Love, Candace Arden
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