The sycamore are changing…last to leaf out…first to die.
I have never run a marathon, but I can imagine you feel pretty beat up the next day if you hadn’t properly trained for it. Now, I have no idea how to properly train for a weekend canning marathon, but I don’t figure sitting on my hiney knitting like a madwoman helped the situation. I fixed breakfast yesterday morning and went to my recliner with my coffee. I knitted for an hour while Mr. FixIt flipped through the channels then decided I’d better get busy and process the last canner full of soup.
What beautiful Georgia Peaches…and they taste SO good!
My cousins over in the mountains near the panhandle of West Virginia routinely can hundreds and hundreds of jars of food every year. They butcher beef and pork. They raise cattle. One has a high tunnel and they sell plants, flowers, and veggies. Their larders look like something out of a magazine. So, when I accomplish what I did this weekend, I feel a little like… “Meh, they do this all the time. It’s not a big deal.” Yeah…tell my feet that! lol
A bushel and a half of tomatoes took me a little more than fourteen hours of work to process. I ended with twenty-eight quarts of tomato purée and a pint and a half of tomato paste. I just cooked down the last of the purée because there wasn’t enough to make a canner full and I can use it in the vegetable beef soup I’m going to can the first of the week.
I got up pretty early yesterday. Well, early for ME. I ran to Riverbend Farm for see if I could get some of her wonderful tomatoes, but alas…I believe I missed the window. It’s getting a little late in the season for tomatoes. I did the next best thing and went to one of my two favorite farm stands. Ward’s Market is where my mom always used to get her produce in the summer. They had canning tomatoes…a half bushel for $15. I bought a bushel and a half…which equates to 75 pounds of tomatoes.
Here on Marshmallow Ranch, we have two creeks bordering our property. They join down at the end of what I call “the far field” where it pretty much comes to a point. At this time of year, temperatures during the day can get quite hot but drop to really great “sleeping weather” temps at night. The ground is saturated from all this rain we’ve been getting so we get fog in “the bottom”…the lowest spot on the property. We have two neighbors within sight…both situated on the other side of the creeks. When we went out to star gaze Wednesday night, the fog rolled into the bottom and the neighbor’s porch light cast an eerie glow in the mist.
Deep in the dregs of January, I could kick myself for not spending more time outdoors in the summer…especially in the evenings. I got a text from our good friend Steve last night. He said he’d heard there was a possibility we could see the Northern Lights if the sky was clear and dark. I said, “Come on out!”
During the two World Wars, the United State’s Government asked the folks at home to help out and do what they could from home. Women went to work in the factories in the jobs abandoned by the soldiers who headed off to fight. There were collection drives for anything that could be of use for the war effort. People even collected urine during the Revolutionary War because there was a shortage of gunpowder and someone thought they could make it with urine, soil, ash, and sticks. It didn’t work from what I gather.
I finally rallied after our very busy weekend and was up and cleaning at a respectable hour considering retirement and all. I piddled around the house. Mr. FixIt made oats for breakfast…one of my favorite things. I took my coffee to my recliner and knitted while I watched the documentary I told you about yesterday. “To Which We Belong” was a wonderful story of ways any one of us can make changes that can reverse the effects of climate change. It did it in a way that steered completely away from politically charged terms like “global warming”. As a matter of fact, the entire focus was on individuals and things they are doing to improve the earth’s soil which in turn will improve the air, water, and temperature. It’s not too late and I was so encouraged by this film. I strongly encourage you to watch it.
When my mom retired, she got into genealogy with a vengeance. She didn’t have a computer or internet access, so I did her research for her. When she passed, there were several boxes of genealogy files in her house that I donated to the Hacker’s Creek Pioneers Central West Virginia Genealogy Library in Horner, West Virginia. They were thrilled to have them. Through my own research, I discovered four of my former classmates were related to me in one way or another. This was the first year they’ve all attended and I got a picture of us together. That was such a treat!
A friend of mine shared a photo of a really epic Camaro he’s bidding on. It’s going to be his new toy. That’s cool. We’ve got toys, too. My two favorite toys are the camper and the riding mower. My pickup ranks up there, as well. Mr. FixIt’s old truck has 222K miles on it now, I’ve learned. We need something fairly economical and reliable that will last us. So we bought a 2002 Lincoln Continental yesterday with only 52.8K miles. That’ll last us a while, I’m guessing. We only paid $7500 for it and in today’s used car market, that’s epic. There’s just one thing….
