I (Tisha) was so excited to have the garden grow well this summer, and have so many people help me with it, I wanted to share about it in a post!
The Tribe owns a tiller and tractor and we pay someone to come till the garden for us. I dug rows and started planting some seeds, and some plants from starts I had growing inside from back in February and March.

I planted carrots, turnips, 4 different lettuces, beats, radishes spinach, Swiss chard, kale, broccoli, parsnip, rutabaga, arugula, potatoes, peas, squash, a couple kinds of salad greens, bok choy, onions, and dill. I also planted a few currant shoots my parents sent out from their current bushes and had our raspberries, strawberries, and chives we planted a few years ago that come back every year, and the rhubarb others had planted before us.
I had many people help me with the garden this year. Our two interns, some of the ladies(including my sister) that came on the work team to fix the radon and had some extra time, and many kids from the community that were looking for a job for some spending money.



We diligently watered it all through June while it was pretty dry out, and then the rains started in July and kept going through August, so we hardly had to water at all after that.



We were donated a grow tent a couple years ago, that lets us grow starts, herbs and other produce that need more warmth then our Alaskan outdoors allows. Shirley, a local friend had started a bunch of tomato plants and gave me some to grow at the beginning of summer. It was super tasty to have vine fresh little tomatoes and so fun to watch them grow.


The harvest started coming in in August, bowls of spinach, huge Swiss chard leaves and kale. I blanched a lot of it and froze it for the winter, and sauteed a lot with meals. I found we really liked the turnip and rutabaga greens sauteed with a little garlic, lemon powder, salt and pepper. By September as the ground began to freeze up I started pulling out the root veggies.



Here is our intern Sophia with some radishes straight from the garden. In the middle of the summer I sprained both my ankles and had to rest them for a couple weeks. During that time Sophia went and hilled my potatoes for me, which made them actually produce potatoes we could enjoy later in the summer. I'm grateful for her help.





I grew a ton of Arugula, and found it is really good as the greens in falafel. I made a lot of falafel and froze it for future meals, and it also made great pesto!

Last summer I had planted a lot of lettuces, but due to the weather temps and lack of sun and watering, basically none of them even sprouted. So this year I planted a ton of lettuce hoping at least some would make it. It ALL sprouted and grew though! So from the early summer with just little lettuce starts to late in the fall with whole bags of lettuce I was giving it away to anyone in the community who wanted some.



When we got back from our fall conference some of the broccoli had already flowered, and I got a broccoli bouquet.


Our fist fall when we moved to Grayling my mom sent us some raspberry shoots to plant. This is the first summer they've done well and we got we got enough berries to add to Indian ice cream I shared with the church body, and brought to some potlucks.




Here are the row of currents I got from my parents that hopefully will start making berries in a couple years.
I planted some flowers in the garden this year that were supposed to attract pollinators, and discourage biting flies which we have a lot of in the summer.

It was so nice to start eating meals with produce from the garden. Arugula pesto on noodles, roasted carrots, rutabaga, turnips, and potatoes, sauteed turnip greens, fresh tomatoes, moose meat we hunted and butchered, Salmon spread from salmon we caught on the copper river this fall with fresh dill from the garden.





While all these dishes and plants are satisfying, rewarding, healthy, cut down on food costs, and a blessing in our lives, we also try not to get distracted by a garden. The harvest we pray for is people coming to know Christ. "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few" rings very true in rural Alaska and we hope and pray for more people to serve in village ministry and we hope and pray for people we deeply care about to trust Jesus with their lives.
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