In this July 20, 2025 vlog, Rebecca and Justin document a busy harvest and preservation day on their North Carolina mountain farm. They start by assessing garden tasks—deciding which tomatoes are ready, planning to transplant cucumbers, and noting heat stress on crops. Rebecca explains the need for more unsprayed blueberries, leading Justin to drive an hour to a neighbor’s farm to pick a large batch of fresh berries for the upcoming "Grow 30" challenge, where they will eat only food grown or sourced within 100 miles for the entire month of August while vlogging daily ("Vlogust"). Back on the farm they transplant cucumbers, re‑plant dill and cilantro, and pull up old cucumber plants for a fall crop. They harvest green beans, using a "pillowcase" method for easy cleaning, and discuss runner beans and a failed yellow squash. The couple then moves on to preservation: Rebecca makes two batches of sauerkraut (purple and green cabbage), jars pickles, and flash‑freezes blueberries on trays. She also hot‑packs blueberries into syrup for future yogurt use, aiming for 14 quarts, and processes beets for freezing. Throughout, they comment on garden conditions (tomatoes not fully red, peppers thriving, first‑time okra, garlic jammed, onions underperforming), family logistics (Justin’s recently dislocated shoulder, kids’ activities, plans to quit grocery store for 30 days), and the overall feeling of productivity and optimism despite the heat. The vlog ends with a family night of scones, ice cream, and the freshly made blueberry preserves.
Chapters
It's a very busy day. My fancy crates were gonna go down. I'm thinking we have tomatoes. I've got to plant two things. I've got to get— oh, watch this. Let me see. Oh wow. I need to sauerkraut cabbage, plant some cucumbers and dill and cilantro that I bought yesterday. I'm probably gonna do tomatoes. I'm gonna assess that and see. Oh, I need to water these real quick.
Oh.
We already have cucumbers. Cucumbers want to grow here. And then the other thing that I want to do today that I've been putting off is blueberries.
We're in the end of July. It's harvest day, which means preservation day. First we got to show the persimmon a little love. I don't know if I can do this with my shoulder. It got dislocated, uh, 2 and a half weeks ago. Oh yeah, I can do this. There's always way more to do on the farm than you have time for, for sure.
There is a farm that is an hour away and they don't spray their blueberries, and so last year we got to pick some blueberries from a neighbor. It wasn't enough And they were very generous, and I'm very grateful, but I would just like more to preserve.
So many tomatoes look ready, but they're not quite ready. I guess that's one less thing we're gonna do— have to do today. So tell us how you know they're not fully ready. So they've got to be all red?
Yeah, I find that when they just even have a little bit of this orange on them, this orange-yellow, they're not ready. Like they were just kind kind of like dry.
And then second test is softness. How soft are they?
Yeah.
Shall we grab green beans and transplant cucumbers before it gets too hot? It's been really hot lately. Hasn't even been cooling off at night, which is rare in the mountains of North Carolina. Boy wants something to eat. It's hard to eat a banana for quickness and for filling enough. What are you gonna do in August when we quit the grocery store? Uh, 3 posts a week right now. We're gearing up and getting ready for Vlogust. We're gonna vlog every day in August. I'm gonna live off the land. Everybody else is gonna quit the grocery store at least for 30 days. All right, we pulling up these cucumbers? Yep. Step 1, I got the cucumbers up. Step number 2, let's pull up the old plants. We got all the cucumbers up. Now we're replanting. This is the only fall crop we're planting.
Um, well, I've got those. I wouldn't call this fall.
We used to be all about it. We used to have a winter harvest garden and stuff, then we stopped eating as many greens. Funner just to grow it all at once and preserve it. Funner is a strong word. I guess we like that better because then the other times of the year we can focus on the animal systems and things like that. These are bush beans. She's ordered some runner beans to see if we can't get them more off the ground for the pillowcase preservation method. It's so much easier than having to wash them. I found that you win some, you lose some each year. We— first year ever we didn't have a yellow squash. The yellow squash plant failed.
We had one little itty-bitty yellow squash.
Never has happened. Now the tomatoes are jamming. Cucumbers did okay. The peppers are doing good. Hey, we might actually get okra for the first time ever. The garlic jammed. The onions didn't do so hot. We have got everybody on deck trying to beat the heat here. A gallon of clean green beans. We are getting out of here. I won't say just on time because it's already very hot. Okay, come on, come on. I don't feel like it's always— I think though we were outside more. I think we've done the biggest garden we've ever done. We're having to be out more past the hot part. Uh, looks like we're moving them, Gideon. It's a week and a half left on these guys. Shores are about to get a lot easier. Let's move them down to so as to hopefully cover this entire pasture that had been washed away from the hurricane. Nothing will help it more than a load of Sea Monster manure. The move's going to be a little tricky though because we're going to have to go that way. We're not just going over, so it's a bigger move for these guys. They are spread out all over the place. It's a big move, but they're starting to figure it out. Jonah, add those to the pillowcases. Here's some. Come drink green beans, Jonah. We figured Rebecca's better to stay at home and do the preservation, and I don't like it, and she's much better at it, and I'm to go on a blueberry run. Take the kids. We're gonna drop her off at horse lessons. I can get some office work done and Josiah can get some driving hours in.
Okay, I have my tray all done up. I don't know if this is a good ratio. It seems a good ratio, and I'm gonna stick it in and just let it broil. And then when Justin gets back, I'll finish making it. Okay, I think it's been about 5 minutes and I'm going to check it. So I'm also gonna let this cool while I wait for Justin to get back. He's almost picking up the blueberries.
At the blueberry farm. This is definitely within 100 miles of our farm. That's gonna be my challenge. August. All of August. We're gonna vlog every day. I am gonna do the Grow 30 Challenge, I'm calling it. Only food I've grown or gotten within 100 miles of the farm. Very nice place. Wow, well kept up. A little eatery, ice cream. The thing about a fruit coming in, just go nuts on it. Oh my word, Josiah, those are so good!
Yeah.
Oh my gosh, these are the best blueberries I've ever had.
That was rough. I lifted more more, I did heavier kettlebells, like trying to build muscle in my 40s. And this is so exciting. I hope I got enough. Do you think we got enough, Justin? I don't either. Okay, we're gonna— what is it, butcher beets? We're butchering the beets. I have my lime juice. I'm gonna pour that in. I'm gonna just pour some salt in. All right, we don't have any chips in the house, so I'm gonna taste it with a spoon. Now I'm going to make sauerkraut. I brought 4 heads of cabbage today. I'm really like— we had to harvest all our cabbage at once, and so I'm trying to work through it as I can. Um, I only have so many fermenting supplies, and, um, that's kind of what's holding me back. I have my purple cabbage, I have my green cabbage. I'm going to get them into their jars and get them into the cabinet. I have this handy dandy tool that helps me put it into the jar. I'm going to take my weight, put this on top. Oh, there's something floating. Screw that on. There's all this juice. I didn't have to use it, and in fact I have too much juice, so I'm gonna actually stick— sit this in here so that when I push that down, the juice just goes in the bowl. My last one did overflow. Here we go, got another gallon of sauerkraut. So I now have— when this will be finished, I will have 2 gallons of sauerkraut, and I will one gallon of pickles. The skins didn't peel off quite as nice as I had hoped, so I did some that were already cut and I cooked those up right there. Now I'm just cutting these and putting them on a tray and I'm gonna flash freeze them.
How are you getting them to not stick in your tray?
I just don't think they will.
Now that we're not using parchment paper.
I just don't think they will.
You've been quite the productive person.
Yeah, and I made The two sauerkrauts too. I finished that. My camera died, so I didn't get to film them.
Yeah, we all have been. These beets, green sauerkraut, purple sauerkraut, blueberries, green beans— they're already in the freezer. A nice salsa verde beef stew soup. You made salsa verde? Yeah. Wow, we've been productive day today. We won today.
So Justin went and picked up all these blueberries for me. I'm going to raw pack them. Last year I canned blueberries, but I hot packed, and I've been doing more research, and, um, since I am not adding syrup to this first batch— so we primarily use the berries in yogurt— if I have any left over, because my goal is to have 14 quarts, then I'm going to hot pack in syrup It's just like sugary syrup. Still have quite a bit of berries left, and so I went downstairs and I've, um, got the beets off of the trays and I washed them. So now I'm gonna freeze blueberries. Cause the kids love blueberries and smoothies and stuff like that. These are almost to a rolling boil, so then I'll process them for 20 minutes once it gets up to a rolling boil, and then you don't have to do that, and then. The blueberries are in the freezer, those trays that I did, and it looks like I had siphoning. So I feel like I struggle with tightening enough or not enough, I don't know. Um, or maybe I filled it too full. This is only my second year doing it, but both years it's happened. Might have just been a little bit. I don't know. We'll see what happens when I pull them out in like 10-ish minutes. I've got my preserves. It's, it's cooked down. I am putting it into jars. I've already got 2 in here. I also have some jars in here in case I have enough, so we'll see what happens with that.
And there's the canned goodness. Mom's scones turned out nice. It is Friday night, family night, Friday night fun night, cheat night. We got scones, we got ice cream. Let's take a bite for us.
I put the preserves on my ice cream.
What was that face? Nice. Was it a little sour? No, I thought there was a little bit of a—
