Farmer's Market: Putting up summer's harvest

I've been shopping almost exclusively at our local farmer's market for nearly 2 months now and loving it. We're fortunate that the South Bend Farmers Market is open year-round and has many offerings that a temporary, tent market doesn't. For example, there are 2 permanant meat and cheese vendors, plus some dry goods vendors that have rice, flour, soaps, leather moccasins and gloves, etc. It's very well-rounded, and I'm grateful for the diversity. Even if not all the goods are local, I'm still supporting local businesses instead of corporate giants.

The fresh food tastes so much better. I didn't realize how much flavor food lost by being transported and refrigerated. And, instead of finding dead worms in your corn, you find live ones! How's that for fresh-picked?!

A few weeks ago, I found some of the largest, most perfect ears of corn I've ever seen.  the corn went all the way to the tip, and the flavor was excellent.  12 ears produced about 16 heaping cups of corn (average seems to be about 1 cup per ear or a little less) , which is now stored in my freezer.  We've used a little of the stored corn, just to try it out, and it beats canned hands-down.  It tasted as though I'd just bought and cooked the corn that day.  I'll be loving that in the middle of the winter!

I've also been buying and putting up, broccoli, green beans, peppers, tomatoes, and carrots.  The carrots are heirloom varieties and come in a multitude of colors:

It's a good thing we bought that freezer.  By the end of fall, it's going to be stuffed with produce...

It's currently home to the veggies, a chicken, a few miscellaneous cuts of meat, sausage, and venison.  I think on Friday I'm going to give canning peaches a try.  The market is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the summer, so I'll stop on Thirsday and load up.  I can always freeze some if the canning turns out to be a huge pain.  I also need to get some roma tomatoes to make pasta sauce.  I would have never thought buying and freezing food could be so much fun!  And, I'm satisfying my New Year's resolution by expanding our food storage at the same time.  By winter, we should barely need to go shopping at all.  How strange...