Today is an "off" day.  No tomatoes to can, potatoes are finished.  Now what to do.  I have a lot of chard.  Perhaps I'll freeze it today; and then of course, there are the leftover green beans.  I probably should pick the last of them and pull the plants.  It's also time to plant more zucchini, squash and beets.  Still plenty to do.  It's just that the things I have to do are not like major big deals.  I'll let you know how it goes.
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Well, we pulled the green bean plants and pulled the beans off the plants.  I was left with 7 quarts of beans to can and 2 quarts to cook up for our dinner tomorrow.  I also cut the Swiss Chard and put two quart packages in the freezer.  I took all the leftover scrap chard out to the chickens and they loved it.  While I was out there I checked for eggs and oh my!!  Ophelia is all grown up!  She is now laying.  It's a beautiful tiny egg.  I'm a very proud momma!!  Hannah has been checking out the nesting boxes too so I figure she's next.  I've got to say, the chickens have been such a treat for me.  I really thought that maybe it wouldn't work out but now that I have them, I can't imagine not having them to feed and water everyday.  I can only assume it taps into my need to care and be responsible for something that depends fully on me.  I don't know but it has been a good thing.

Below are some pics of our garden and there should be more on my Pictures page.

It's a new day and it's beautiful outside!!  Today I can more potatoes and tomatoes.

By the way, last night, after all the canning, Hubby and I sat out on the deck in the cool of the evening and were sitting there talking away.  No, I was talking away and Hubby was listening, as usual.  I'm the talker in the family and all of a sudden I went silent.  Two beautiful young deer came up into the yard out of our woods.  They were unafraid and were actually playing and running around kicking up their heels like two kids.  It was a really cool site . . . then later in the evening I went out to the herb garden to pick basil.  I was picking and sniffing and feeling awesome but I kept hearing something and figured it was those doggone squirrels.  I looked up and there were the deer toward the back of my herb garden.  They saw me and very nonchalantly went down over the hill behind my herb garden.  Well, folks, my herb garden has seen better days and there really wasn't that much for them to eat so I had to smile and just kept on picking basil.  Sometimes in order to enjoy one thing you have to let the other go.  I can spare a few herbs for a sight like that!!

Today will be dedicated to canning and laundry.  Another uneventful day here at the ranch.  Those days aren't all bad you know.  Not everyday can be a day full of wonder and excitement.
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I'm finally finished canning the new potatoes and it looks like I'll have about 6 or 7  more quarts of tomato sauce by the end of the day.  I'm in the process of cooking it down now.

While cleaning up my kitchen I fixed a meatloaf for supper and slipped it in the frig.  I've got some leftover new potatoes and leftover cole slaw.  That ought to do us for supper.  It's just 2:00 p.m. and I'm tired already.  I have 2 loads of laundry left and I can call it a day.  Good thing!!!

Boy, you gotta admit, the weather has been pretty perfect the last couple days!!  I'm heading out this morning to pick squash, cucumbers and tomatoes and then I'll be inside most of the day canning. 

This year I'm doing something differently than in past years.  In past years I made spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, salsa, pizza sauce and tomato paste.  You know, a variety of tomato sauces; but I've found that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking anyway, since I actually do love to cook, and it's just not necessary for me to make all the different sauces.  I have extra canned salsa and tomato paste from last year so I don't need anymore there - so this year I'm just going to make tomato sauce and make my other sauces as I need them.  I will can some whole tomatoes but I've found that tomato sauce is an overall perfect item for me to can and is most used through the Winter.  I realize that this would not suit everyone and in fact wouldn't have suited me 10 years ago but it's perfect for me now.  Later this summer I intend to make some frozen pizzas and that is about the only particular sauce I would want prepared lickety-split that would require painstaking time to fix from scratch.  Making my pizzas ahead of time will fix that.  So that's my plan and I'm sticking to it!!
 
So . . . I'm off to the garden and then the kitchen.  The next time you hear from me I'll be so tired I won't hardly be able to type.  Ah!! people should have it so good!!!
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I froze 3 quart bags of sliced green bell peppers and I believe I'm going to leave the rest of the peppers hanging on the plants until they turn red.  I do love red peppers!!

I did indeed can most of the day and enjoyed it immensely.  The carrots are beautiful and I've just begun on the tomato sauce.  I love seeing my pantry grow!!

My morning was fairly well planned out.  My intentions were to make cole slaw, freeze some broccoli I had cut yesterday, slice up about 8 huge green peppers, freeze them and maybe can a few jars of tomato sauce.  I could forget all that!!!  Always, always, when I have everything all worked out it never goes according to plan.  That's my life!  Hubby got  up really early and dug the last row of potatoes and they are beautiful.  I, on my way to fulfilling my scheduled plans, found that I didn't have any carrots for the cole slaw so I went out to dig two (2), hear me now - just two (2) carrots.  They were all perfect for digging.  So perfect I was nearly afraid to leave them in the ground any longer especially with the weather right now being so up in the air.  So . . . plan change.  They do look great though, don't you think?

I put 6 packages of 6 carrots in the bottom of the refrigerator.  Last year I had fresh carrots all Winter long doing it this way.  You dig your carrots, using only the perfect ones, leave about 2 inches of the green on top, do not wash, just sort of wipe some of the dirt off, put them in freezer baggies and put them in the bottom of your refrigerator in the crisper drawer.  It really works!!  The rest of the carrots are headed for the canner.  I use the food processor to slice them, fill the jars and can.  Hubby and I love creamed carrots and buttered carrots and so enjoy carrots in soups.  The canned carrots fit the bill for us.  We truly don't eat many fresh carrots except for salads and occasionally cut up for dips so, we should be set for Winter as far as carrots are concerned.

But . . . my plans were blown!!  I got the broccoli put up but the rest is stuffed in the refrigerator.  Herb Club is tonight and I have plans for shopping and perhaps visiting some of my friends in Vincennes.

Tomorrow is another day and you all know for sure what I'll be doing!!!

It's 6:00 a.m. and I'm up but not awake yet.  I'm typing a little on my blog and drinking coffee before I get ready to go to the family reunion  I'm hoping this is a great day!!  I'm looking forward to seeing family I've not had the opportunity to have seen in awhile.  Next year it will be my turn to host the family reunion. 

I'm on my way out to the barn to check on my girls.  It's supposed to be hot today and I want to make sure they have plenty of water before I take off.  Have a wonderful day and I'll talk to you when I get home.
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We had a wonderful day together with family.  We ate at the Mongolian Grill for lunch and had a great meal and fine, fine company.  Then it was off to one of Lexington's parks where we had games, fun and food. 

We left to go back home about 5:30 p.m. and were quite concerned because of the weather reports we were hearing.  We got about 20 minutes from home and it commenced to downpouring and lightning up a major storm.  It was scary.  When we left Lexington it was 91 and by the time we got halfway home it was 97, so it was a lot warmer here and obviously, that was effecting the weather - and then the rain hit.  We got home and I jumped out of the car and opened the garage for our car to be pulled in, then Hubby ran for the truck to put it in the shop and drove my van out to the barn.  We were trying to keep any kind of hail off of the vehicles if it was at all possible.  I ran out to the barn before him to check on my chickens and open the gates.  We were soaked - tee totally soaked but we weren't hit by lightning and the vehicles were as safe as they could be.  My girls were roosting and looked fine so I just left them alone.

We both came back in the house, shucked our wet clothing and got on something dry.  Now, finally, I think we're just going to call it a day.  It's 9:15.  Time enough for a cup of tea and two huge sighs of relief.  We're home, safe and all is well . . . for now!!

I'm sort of "out there" today.  Hubby had to go to work for a few hours and I'm at loose ends.  I've decided that today I would just sort of loaf.  Now saying that and doing it is completely two different things.  I so want to feel energetic when I go to the reunion tomorrow but you know, there's that fine line between working yourself to death and boring yourself to death - so we'll see how the day goes.

I've already gone out and picked tomatoes, squash and zucchini.  The tomatoes are about to explode and next week, I can rest assured, will be spent up to my elbows in red stuff.  That's okay though.  I'm completely out of tomato sauce and that's the one item in my pantry that I feel like I must have.  We eat boatloads of tomato sauce!!  Of all the produce I can, tomatoes is the biggy.  First off, we love spaghetti, but lasagna, chili, pizza, vegetable soup, salsa, ketchup, tomato paste, casseroles and you name it - cannot exist without tomatoes.  Then there's crushed tomatoes for my Mexican Breakfast Casserole, whole tomatoes cold as a side, macaroni and tomatoes.  Oh my gosh!!  We LOVE tomatoes.  That doesn't even include fresh sliced tomatoes, BLT's, stir-fried cherry tomatoes, fried green tomatoes, breaded tomatoes, cream cheese-stuffed appetizer tomatoes, tuna-stuffed tomatoes, insulata caprese, and tomatoes in lettuce leaf salads.  You want me to go on???  No, I think not.  Suffice it to say we cannot live without tomatoes!!!  So next week I will be working extremely hard - but no complaints here.

We ended up with approximately 150 ears of corn in the freezer.  First time in 3 years we've been able to save our corn from the racoons and the possums.  Now we've just got to figure out how to save our pears from the squirrels.  They are already chomping down bigtime on them. 
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I had a gallon baggie chock full of red and yellow cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator and knew that if I let them sit in there until Monday, that some of them would rot; so I washed them and put them all in my food processor and then strained them.  Next I put the strained mixture in a pan, added dried basil and oregano, garlic powder, chopped onions, salt, pepper and some olive oil and cooked it down.  I also added a tablespoon of the dried vegetable mix I made last season for extra yummy flavor.  It made one fine spaghetti sauce.  I added some cooked hamburger and then put it all in the frig to cool.  There was no need for the hamburger; but as you know, hubby is a meat man!!   Supper is accomplished.   

I had some leftover unshucked corn in the frig that was getting old so I shucked, boiled and froze it.  Yes, letting it sit in the frig probably depleted its nourishing value but it will still have some vitamins and taste pretty good too.  It actually probably sat in my frig a lot shorter time than it would have if I'd went to the store.  I ate the leftover green beans & corn and sliced tomatoes for lunch.  This leaves my refrigerator ready for next week.  It's all cleaned out and ready for whatever. 

My list for next week reads - Can Potatoes and Make Tomato Sauce.  I have a feeling that's just about all that's going to be happening for the next couple weeks.

I haven't been sleeping very well at night here lately and when I went to bed last night I closed my eyes and I was gone!!!  At last!!  A full night sleep!!  My whole body was starting to get run down.  Our family reunion is Saturday and the last thing I wanted was to go to it exhausted.  Anyway, this morning I woke up at 7:30 a.m. feeling great and awfully laid back.  I walked out to kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, looked out the window and what do you think I saw?  Hubby was out shucking and hairing corn.  Shoot!!  Doggone it!!  Blast it!!  By 9:30 we'd put up 50 ears of some of the most beautiful corn we've ever grown and I had picked 1/2 bushel of green beans.  It was not my intention to pick green beans to can.  I had told hubby that I was just going to go out and get enough for a pot of beans, that the green beans were done and this would be the last of them.  Nope, no way, they are still producing!!  I'm not complaining - but yes, I guess I am.  I had canned 50 quarts and really, for a row of beans that was pretty good.  I was sure there would not be anymore and I really didn't need anymore either.  Well, it's not to be and I absolutely will not let them go to waste so - I'm canning green beans today too!!

I want to play in my herb garden and walk in the woods and stuff like that but you gotta do what you gotta do and quite frankly, better to have a lot of beans rather than no beans at all.  It's another one of those choices you have to make.  Either count your blessings or sit around complaining.  You know.  The glass half full or half empty thing.
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Green Beans have been snapped and canned and I've canned more yellow squash and zucchini.  I'm finished.  I've got more time but I've decided to go on strike for the rest of the day. TeeHee!!!

We're going to have fried ham, corn on the cob, green beans and sliced tomatoes for supper and that's all she wrote!!!

See Ya!!

Yahoo!!! It's raining!!  Oh, my tomatoes needed rain so badly.  I'm extremely excited to see what results this will bring because the tomatoes this year are just beautiful.

The chickens appreciated the rain too.  They stayed out in the rain and cooed and carried on something fierce.  I kept finding any excuse I could to run out and grab something.  I'm like a little kid when it rains.  I love getting wet.  I love feeling the drops on my face and cool breezes blowing through my hair.  I just can't seem to grow up!!  I count this a blessing!

I took a picture of the hibiscus I have outside my guest bedroom window before it started raining this morning.  It is flourishing this year.  My girlfriends bought me this hibiscus back when my Mother passed away and it was a beautiful specimen.  Hubby came along in its second year, without saying anything to me, cleaned it and cut it too far back right before a frost and killed it.  I had previously, earlier in the season, taken a couple broken limbs and literally pushed them down into the dirt in my herb garden and one of them grew roots.  I was rather upset about my plant and did some major chewing on hubby, even though I knew he was only trying to help out.  I was not being a very nice person and had to do some major apologizing later.  Last Spring I transplanted the hibiscus from the herb garden to below the guest bedroom "again", hoped for the best, and told him to please just leave it alone. 

It is a sensational looking plant this year.  Hubby has long been off the hook and is forgiven and my behavior about it just showed me another one of my not-so-nice character flaws.  Come on - after all, it is "just" a plant. 

I've been reading a blog called Chaotic Simplicity and she quoted scripture that really made me think.  “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as it fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29

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I'm up early this morning and I'm trying to be very quiet so as to not wake hubby.  He's been working extra hours at the farm store and is really tired.  To be honest, I rolled out of bed feeling almost as tired as when I got in last night.  I canned almost all day yesterday and will likely do the same today.  I did something last night that I absolutely despise doing, but I was so tired.  I went to bed with my kitchen in a mess.  Aghhh!!!  This morning I almost beat myself for doing such a thing.  It feels okay in the evening to just throw in the towel but come morning and you have to face it, eeeek!!!!  Never again!!

Today is what I often call canning and freezing clean-up day - the day after you've done the major portion of the canning but you still have a little of this and a little of that to finish up.  I've got about 4 heads of broccoli to process, 2 cabbage heads that I'm just going to cut and put in the frig until Monday, some yellow squash and zucchini to do something with, probably can; and I'll probably make some zucchini bread.  I need to pick the few remaining red raspberries, put some cucumbers and onions in vinegar, and I need to move the onions we're drying to a cooler area.  Yikes!!  I didn't realize I had so much to do.  Yet, it's all just little stuff.  Sometimes it's the little stuff that adds variety though, so I do it.  Next week the cabbage will make cole slaw for lunches and cooked cabbage to go with beans, corn on the cob, fried potatoes and cornbread.  Some of the broccoli will go in salad and some in the freezer, and the bread will be a tasty breakfast.  The raspberries will taste good with a little whip cream and I'll probably grill up some squash too.  Like I said, some of the veggies will go in the freezer and canner and some will be used for meals.  Summer is always such a pleasure when it comes to preparing meals if you can just find the time to do it!!  I'm also going to take some of the tomatoes and make salsa.  Yum, I love fresh salsa and hubby has already informed me that 2 of those tomatoes will be making their way to his BLT's!!  Of course, there's always laundry to do too!!  It never ends!

It's been a hot day here at the ranch.  It was already 90 degrees at 10:30 a.m. and got up to a toasty 95.  The chickens started showing signs of heat stress so I put their ice jugs out for them and they got all cozy sitting around the ice-filled containers.  I put an extra pan of cool water in their run and they really liked that.  Ophelia just loves to stand around in it. 
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I decided to take a break and snap a few photos.  Some of the flowers are so beautiful and if it doesn't rain here pretty soon I'm afraid this will be the last really pretty flowers.  Also, my tomatoes need rain badly.  They are on the cusp of being the biggest and the best!!  By the time I got out to the garden to take pics I was hot and sweaty.  A baby robin was being chased around the yard by bigger adult birds and its Mother was going crazy so after they drove the baby into the lake I waded in and got him back on land and chased him into the tree line.  Whew!!  Way too hot for messing around like that!!!

I'm canning peaches today.  I've put a few back for grilling.  I love to grill peach halves.  You just cut them in half and take the seed out of course.  Do not peel, then brush them lightly with olive oil and put them on the grill.  I like to brush a little olive oil on the grill too.  The marks of the grill on the peaches makes it so pretty and the heat softens and warms them up perfectly.  When they are ready the juice will begin to pool inside where the peach pit was.  Then I like to take them off the grill and put a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in the center of each peach drizzling honey on top with some julienned sweet, cinnamon or lemon basil sprinkled on for added scrumptious flavor.  To be honest, plain old grilled peaches with nothing on them doesn't taste half bad either!!!  But - I digress - today I'm canning peach halves and perhaps make some peach preserves if I have the energy.

Guests from out of town stopped by yesterday for a short visit and I rummaged through the refrigerator for some snacks.  I had some cantaloupe so I chunked that up.  I also had some squash, zucchini, cucumbers, yellow and red cherry tomatoes - so I cut them into bite sized pieces, put them in a bowl and added a dollop of sour cream with dill weed, garlic salt and pepper.  I had some goat cheese so I marinated it in olive oil, lemon thyme, rosemary and red pepper flakes and pulled out some crackers.  There were some leftover lemon bars so I put some of them on a plate and offered them regular tea and applemint/tarragon tea.  They seemed to enjoy the snacks.  It was hot and everything was light and cool so I'm hoping it worked for them.

I've got pheasant in the crockpot today because I know I'll be making peach jam this evening and won't have time to fuss over dinner.  I'm also going to take a few of the peaches and start a new peach shrub.  I just haven't decided yet what kind of concoction it will be.  So many things to do and all of them fun, fun, fun . . . but work!!