Vegetables and beyond in the Craftsbury gardens
The gardens at Craftsbury are flourishing! Seeing them every day, working on garden projects with the other GRP women, it’s easy to take the nutritious beauty for granted. So I wanted to share some scenes of growing things and garden work, before the season passes!
Kait and Heather picking herbs. The leafy green plants are flourishing with all the rain and sun we’ve had – pictured here is kale, dill, radicchio, beets, basil, parsley. Of course the weeds are flourishing too, but we try to stay on top of it as much as possible, and just staged a major weed knockdown yesterday (after this picture was taken…it’s a bit messy here) which helped a bunch!
Trees of kale
Vibrant rainbow swiss chard
Bumblebees on echinacea flowers near the herb and vegetable gardens. If you’re in the area it’s worth walking by to see the flowers too!
Heather clipping tomatoes, using the handy features of straps to store some extra clips. We clip the tomato vines up along strings to help support their weight.
Stunning clusters of fruit
Cherry tomatoes bursting with flavor, such a treat!
Kait and Pam spot a big “sucker” – if we don’t watch out the tomatoes will try to grow into bushes, instead of the way we want them growing vertically. Careful pruning of the suckers prevents this from happening, but they grow quickly and often get away from us.
One night the skiers decided to stay home and cook our own dinner, partially for the fun of collecting and preparing so many local ingredients – zucchini, kale, tomatoes and more, to go with fantastic hamburgers and homemade buns. Cooking for ourselves one night reminded us how nice it is that we are able to eat amazing meals at the dining hall, cooking for yourself takes serious planning and time, especially in a house of 12+ athletes!
One day several of us skier GRP girls worked on the project of making pesto. First we picked the basil from the COC garden, leaf by leaf, then processed it with walnuts, cheese, oil, and garlic. Our house smelled amazing with so much basil around.
Fresh garlic piled up for processing
Liz on the food processor and Heather drying basil leaves
Heather, Kait, and Liz checking the pesto… have to make sure it tastes good!
Heather samples the favorite snack of the day, fresh pesto on a walnut. Taste = verified to be amazing! Great fuel for our strength workout coming up!
Liz clipping garlic scapes. The COC dining hall made excellent scape pesto when they were in season.
Raspberries and spider webs in the early morning
Parting photo of wild black raspberries. It was the best wild berry year I’ve seen yet in 4 years at Craftsbury!