August

I don’t think it is possible to keep up with every thing that always needs done in August. This is the least necessary so nothing gets written.

It has been an incredibly busy month, doing what I can’t even begin to remember. School is going again, we had a big birthday, The garden is going crazy. It is impossible to keep up with the produce.

A couple of weeks ago some friends came over and we had a canning bee. We put up approximately sixty pints of salsa, pickled beans and pickles. It was exhausting and it was great fun with brownies and homemade ice cream. There is so much more that needs canned I think we will have to do it again.

We, just us this time, canned our first batch of green beans in the pressure cooker. I have always been terrified of them but have friends who go about using them with not a drop of fear, peer pressure isn’t always a bad thing, so we gave it a try. We haven’t eaten any yet but they look good and we didn’t die. Always a good thing. I have been looking at other pressure cooker canning recipes and we are definitely going to try that again.

I put up our first batch of oven roasted tomatoes last night. It is the easiest and my favorite method for preserving tomatoes. Slice them in inch thick slices and put them on a pan in the oven for an hour or so, let cool, put in freezer bag in freezer. Sounds hard huh? They have great flavor and I can put a batch on while I cook supper, no extra mess or fuss.

The corn is ripe, finally. Getting past sweet corn stage quickly we need to start freezing some, soon.

The pumpkins are going insane. I love it. I left too many of the volunteers but I think the planted ones are doing okay out in that jungle anyway. I love the weird mixes we end up with though.

We have eaten our first watermelon but they and the cantaloup seem to be taking forever to get ripe. All this beautiful cool wet weather isn’t helping them any.