Onion Harvest

This past weekend we pulled up and processed our onions. It was a quick little homestead event, even with us planting more onions than we have in a quite a few years. Thus meaning it was one of our biggest harvests of onions and for that I am super excited! It's always a blessing when your hard work is rewarded by a bountiful harvest. After all the more you grow the less you have to buy from the store ~ which is one of our biggest goals in having this little homestead. 

Harvesting onions is super easy. All you have to do is pull them straight up out of the ground! It's so easy, even our two year old got in on the action.

I'm sure it's just because it's early in the main summer gardening season, but everyone was overly happy to participate in harvesting the onions. Children are fairly similar to adults when it comes to being refreshed and recharged after a long winters rest ~ come August we'll all be struggling to keep the momentum along with the right attitude.

 Everyone got their hands dirty during our onion harvesting, which is probably why it went by so quickly. The saying "many hands make light work", is no truer than when harvesting and preserving the garden. I could barely take a few pictures and a couple videos before all the onions were picked, but, hey, I'm not complaining. The quicker we are able to get it done the quicker we can move on to the next area that needs attention on our homestead. Trust me the work is never done, no matter how hard we try to keep up.

  

Once the onions we were picked we had a crew inside washing and chopping the tops off as well as a crew outside doing the same.

We cut the tops off of the onions and discarded them into our compost pile. There's probably something fabulous you can make with them, but I've honestly never taken the time to research it.

We ended up with two large basins full of onions to process.

Once all the tops were cut off and the onions were washed, we set to processing them in our food processor. If you choose to use a food processor to chop your onions, it is important not to over process them or they will turn into mush. I prefer to just pulse them a few times and at that point they're usually the right consistency. Once they're all chopped we scoop them into freezer bags by the cup full. We place four cups of onions into each freezer bag, for the simple reason that my canning recipes typically measure in four cup increments. This way once canning season is in full swing all I have to do is pull the bags of onions from the freezer and they're already pre-measured to throw into my canning pots as needed.

Involving children in the start to finish process of growing your own food is a wonderful aspect of the homesteading movement. There are so many amazing skills to be learned on a working homestead. Life skills that can truly benefit children for years to come. When someone is taught where something comes from they obtain knowledge, but teach them how to do something and they have a priceless skillset. Knowledge combined with ability is a powerful asset that we all should be pursuing via as many avenues as possible. 

The homesteading life is an amazing platform to obtain an array of knowledge and skills. Which can in turn be passed down from generation to generation. (Sadly, many are on the cusp of extinction due to the progression of technology). There is priceless value in the art of heritage skills, growing your own food, and the family unit. I'm beyond grateful that I have had the opportunity to rekindle the homesteading skills of days gone by with my family. The memories we've made and the lessons we've learned have been more than a blessing; they've been a beacon of hope in this darkened world we find ourselves living in. As I've said time and time again ~ the back-to-basics lifestyle is not an easy life, but it is a good life. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer