Where we thought we were busy before, it was nothing like right now. Holy cow, it seems like everything is coming in at once! The tomatoes are ripening like gang busters, the apple trees are loaded to the point they’re dropping off on the ground, the plums are nuts, and the sweet corn is starting to come in. Not to mention the dry beans in the Wolf Garden.
Add this to Will’s daughter, Jenna, coming for a visit and us getting a new wood stove for our living room. Whew! Will and I had driven to Lowe’s to get the stove I’d ordered and, due to the heavy-duty wood crate it came in, they could barely squeeze it into the back of our Escape. It took three guys and a lot of wiggling and shoving. The next day, Will set about getting it out and unwrapped, no small feat, let me tell you. Now it’s set up with new stove pipe, as the old was getting rusty. He needs one small section to finish up, but he had to order a stove pipe crimper to make a male end on the second end of the small section of pipe. We run the pipe “backwards” so any creosote runs inside the pipe, instead of down the outside.
Yesterday, Will and Jenna picked about half a bushel of nice Sweet Sixteen apples. I spent the afternoon peeling and slicing them and then canning. All totaled, I got 15 quarts of slices canned. That was about half of them, so today, after I can the small batch of sweet corn, I’ll get at peeling those leftover apples. There are three more trees with larger apples on them and two huge, sweet crab apple trees, drooping with thousands of apples.
Oh, yes, then there’s the plums. Yesterday, David and family stopped by for some canning jars and information as a neighbor had given Elizabeth a big bunch of apples. She wants to make apple butter. While here, we also picked a nice bag of plums. Granddaughters, Delilah and Melanie, loved seeing plums drop off of branches Dad gave a little shake. I’ve still got about a bushel of plums (conservative estimate) to make jelly and plum sauce with.
I love meals at this time of the year. Most come from the garden. Yesterday, for lunch, we had sweet corn, juicy Sweet Granite muskmelon and strawberry shortcake. Today, it’s BLTs. So much for the diet, huh? Tonight, it’s chicken pot pie with garden vegetables in it. Gee, isn’t homesteading tough? — Jackie
