We are just back from our vacation to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, arriving home at 4:00 am this morning. It was nice to wake up at home. It is a cool morning, there are a few leaves on the deck, and acorns bouncing off the steel roof. Fall is coming, and I'm ready.
Not quite prepared, but ready anyway. We haven't gone into the garden yet, but I have already put canning jar lids on my shopping list for today, since I'm sure there are tomatoes and beans and grapes to blanch and cut and juice and preserve. And that other harbinger of autumn... the first day of school. It looms not so far off in the future. This week is a week of crossing items off to-do lists, hopefully.
Some preparations for cooler weather have already been made. I've been making and canning and freezing stock for most of the summer, when the opportunity presents itself. A new project: corn stock. Simply simmer the gnawed cobs for several hours, with herbs. It smells divine.
Isn't it lovely? I look forward to using it as a base for soups and chowders. We're a soup-eating crowd at TelltheBees.
The potatoes are dug already. It was a bumper crop! In addition to George's Potatoes, a white heirloom variety I've named after their source, an old gardening neighbor and special friend of my grandparents, we threw some blue and red potatoes that were left at our house in the ground too, to great results.
We brought some of these with us to Virginia, and have tubs of them resting in the cool dark underneath the cupboards in the sunken greenhouse.
The bees have been checked and rechecked, but we probably won't harvest any honey this year. We were far too late adding extra space in the spring, busy as we were with other big things, and one of the hives swarmed. Everyone in there is happy now, but even with this long hot summer, they had a slow start. As my dad said, we got a different kind of honey.
We sure did.
I couldn't resist buying a case of Michigan peaches at the co-op before we left, and canned a bunch of rhubarb peach sauce, whose intended use is to mix into plain yogurt for a bright spot in my winter breakfasts.
I didn't follow a recipe here, but added extra citric acid and processing time for safety. I did not, however, add vinegar to the water bath, which made for cloudy jars and lids.
And now... off to our strategic planning meeting for the week. On it: much gardening, canning, cleaning, preparing, and home-improvement projects.
A coffee toast to a productive week for all!
A coffee toast to a productive week for all!
