Wednesday, September 16, 2009

In Which I Justify My Laziness

It seems as if many of the garden blogs I read are keeping track of harvest totals this year. I like to read these and see just how many pounds of beans someone (Finny) is harvesting, but I can state with some certainty that I will never, ever do this myself. Despite the fact that were I to do so, I would TOTALLY WIN.

Wait, is that not the point of keeping track? My bad.

BUT ANYWAY.

The reason I will not do it is that there is just too much. Isn't it enough that I have to plant, tend, harvest, and process the output of 70 corn plants without hauling out a scale and weighing it all, too? Yes, I think it is enough. Anyway, my kitchen scale only goes up to 11 pounds, which means anything heavier than 11 pounds (and many of my harvests are heavier than that) would require the hunting up of the bathroom scale, weighing myself first, then weighing myself holding the harvest and subtracting to get the weight of the harvest.

Honestly, that's just too tiring. Could you imagine doing that for all those boxes of potatoes? No thank you.

BUT. Just for fun, and because A. was curious, I weighed everything I harvested yesterday. I spent an hour or so in the morning gathering tomatoes, green beans, jalapenos, purple cabbages, Seckel pears, and the pumpkin of Damocles. This is the only time you will see actual harvest totals on this site:

Tomatoes+green beans+jalapenos that were all in the canvas bag and did you REALLY expect me to pick them all out and weigh them separately?: 8 pounds
Cabbages: 24 pounds
Pears: 14 pounds
Pumpkin: 12 pounds

Total: 58 pounds

Here's the photographic evidence:

The onion bag is full of purple cabbage. And oh look! There's an egg! It's not included in the total.

The Seckel pears, by the way, are not all picked. I just did the ones I could reach from the ground. I'll have to get A. out there with a ladder to get the ones on the top, so there will be more of those. And that's just a small tree in the paddock. The big pear tree in the ram pasture is the one that provided 39 quarts of canned pears last year. Those pears have not yet been picked. There is much more to come, oh yes. But as far as the actual weight goes? You'll just have to go with my standard measurement of a shitload and leave it at that.

Works for me.

9 comments:

Susan said...

That is indeed a shitload of produce!

Tara_LB said...

Holie-moly Batman! That probably counts as 2 shitloads, or at 1.5 at least.
Just so you know:
1 shitload = 10 craploads?
1 crapload = 10 "a-lots"
and so on ;)

Well done-good luck with the canning etc!

Chiot's Run said...

I love to weigh mine, but mine are pretty small & measely as I have a tiny garden. It makes me fell better since I don't have space to grow 70 corn plants.

I'd love to get one of those old hanging market scales to hang at the back entrance for weighing, it would make it easier.

Congrats on all the harvests!

Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother said...

I'll be counting mine. That's right, not weighing, counting. Because I've got one damn tomato plant, and I'll be picking the very first ripe ones tonight. I want a real garden.

Oh, and a question, is that a metric shitload or imperial? Because if it's metric, then Tara is right about the shitload -> crapload -> a-lot conversion. But imperial is still all quaint:
1 shitload = 9 craploads
1 crapload = 4 logs
1 log = 23 kernels

Ummm ... I'll stop now.

FinnyKnits said...

How do you know if you'd TOTALLY WIN if you don't tally, Kris? COME ON. I could totally be beating you!

Ok, yeah right. I know I can't beat you with your 37 tomato plants and all that effin' corn.

Super cool though - big harvests are the best.

Phoo-D said...

Wow, I can hardly comprehend the amount of produce you process. It is truly impressive! We finally picked our first non-roma tomato last week and the thing weighed in at almost 2 pounds! Those hierlooms can get huge. I'm feeling a little afriad that a dozen will ripen at once...

Wendy said...

Well, you probably won't see me tally my harvests either, just due to time restraints. But if I wanted to, I guess I could send my 4 year old out to count. Or any bright 2 year old on the block who can count to 10 or 15 or so.

Mayberry Magpie said...

You've got the tomato blight, we've got the tomato bonanza. Must be all the rain we had in August. As you know, I don't plant veggies. But my friend Julie's mom does, and she's been getting a 10-gallon bucket full every other day. We can't give all these tomatoes away.

rls said...

I got nothin'. But I'm damn impressed.