Fall is in the Air

Well its starting to cool down here. Its been in the 80's this week and by the weekend it will be in the high 70's with high 50's at night.

Last week was a busy week, between doing all the extra transcription and trying to get the canning and freezing done I need a rest! The freezer is getting fuller with corn, green beans, okra, tomatoes, spagettic and peaches. I have 2 shelves in my pantry full of jars of spagetti sauce, tomatoe sauce, tomatoes, green beans, peaches, salsa, green tomatoe relish and dill and sweet picke. There are still some green peppers in the garden and cherry tomatoes. Also the potatoes need to be dug. Chuck built a large potato bin under the house and the neighbor is keeping his potatoes in it. He has a basement but in the winter he uses a wood furnace for heat so his basement is to warm for keeping potatoes down there. Joe has about 12-15 bushels of red and white potatoes in the bin. They do have all their jars of goodies down there plus a freezer full. Jan has been giving me pointers on how to can certain things like the peaches. I think I will do some pears as well if they give us some pears again this year. Its really not hard to can just time consuming. Next year Chuck is going to fire up the wood stove in the shed and do the canning out there. That will save on electric to plus time. We have given a couple of our friends some of the things we have canned plus fresh vegetables when we have to much to use up ourselves. The neigbors just gave us a huge sweet potatoe squash now to figure out how to preserve that!

We finally got the office/spare bedroom painted and back together. Chuck just has to move the treadmill back in here from the porch. Its been out there since early July to make room for someone to sleep in here. We hope the start repainting and redoing the main bathroom. We are having a bathroom cabinet made for in there since the smallest one we have seen is still to wide (its a very small bathroom). New fixtures for the shower and walls and a new sink for the cabinet. We have a pedistal sink in there now which we will be giving to Chucks sister she is redoing her bathroom and wants it.

Family Visit and Canning fun!

Al though we didn't do alot while the kids were here everyone seem to have a good time. Kristy's favorite thing to do was to take a book and read out on the back porch. She was amazed that she could sit out there and not sweat like FL. Plus she didn't have to worry about people always showing up there. They left to go back to FL on July 21st the house was sure quiet after they left. The cats that had been hiding out the whole 2 weeks that they were here finally came out of hiding. Two of the cats got out somehow one of which was gone for four days! Guess they don't like their routine being messed up! Talk about set in there ways! The cats learned to run whenever Lilly the 20 month old was in site! All except for the youngest cat Cricket.

Speaking of cats a long haired black female showed up and we didn't know that Kaylee and Jynna were feeding her! She is also pregnant. This was confirmed yesterday when we took her to the vet. We left her there to be spade. There is a male cat hanging around if we can catch him will get him fixed as well. I guess thats one drawback to living in the country!

I am still putting up vegetables. I sent Kristy home with Spagetti sauce, dill pickes and potatoes. Joe keeps bringing us veggies (excess from his garden). We have gotten tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and beans. I still have a few more pickles to put up this time sweet pickles. His tomatoes got some kind of disease from to much rain and they are rotting before completely ripening. We picked some green tomatoes and I made a couple of jars of sweet relish. Corn and pole beans went into the freezer as well as yellow squash from our garden. We are still getting cucumbers, tomatoes and onions and the potatoes should be ready to dig up. Joe says he will have about 40 bushels of potatoes and asked if he could store them under our house this winter. Chuck is in the process of building a bin for the potatoes. Joe has a wood stove in the basement so its to hot down there for the potatoes to keep. Hopefully, they will keep well under the house.

Thank heavens for my Ball books since I never canned before the books have been a big help.
I hope to put up more veggies next year.

Visitors

Well today our youngest daughter and her three daughters will be driving up to TN from FL. Its about a 12 hour drive and their air-conditoning quit in the van so they decided to travel at night. They will be spending the night at a motel between Atlanta and Macon. Hopefully they will be ok and won't have any car trouble. When they get up here we can take the van in and see whats wrong with the air conditioning. Hopefully it just needs freon. The two oldest girls are so excited. They drove up here in Nov. for Thanksgiving and now they will see how pretty it is up here in the summer. They want to hike in the woods and go swimming in the lake. We have a huge lake nearby. We hope to have a pontoon next year if they come back again which I am sure they will.

Thank goodness they like dill pickes I have so many jars made. I seem to get cucumbers and squash every day. Even a few tomatoes. Potatoes will be ready soon. Well I will write more later and post pictures of the family later on.

Garden Bounty

I have been busy the past couple of days canning pickles and freezing squash. Our neighbor brought over a bucket almost half full of cucumbers last night. I guess they must have planted alot but didn't need to can anymore. I went over to their house on Sat. and Joe's wife Jan was canning pickles. Canning is something that I have never done. She gave me a jar of sweet pickles that she put up last summer and boy were they good she also gave me the receipe. So I have spent the last 2 days canning pickles. I went out and got a canning pan with rack yesterday and its alot easier and it holds 6 jars at a time. The pint jars take 5 minutes and the quart 10 minutes to process. I also made some sweet zucchini pickles. Walmart sold packages of the kosher dill, reg. dill and bread and butter pickle mix. I don't care for the bread and butter mix so will use Jan's receipe next batch. The kosher dill and regular dill turned out good. I found a receipe in my canning book for dill pickles and made a batch today. Hope they are good. Now to find a place to store them all. I plan to make some pickle peppers to. Our daughter and 3 grandaughters are driving up from FL on Monday and they all love the dill pickles and daughter likes sweet pickles. My husband doesn't like sweet pickles. Can't wait till they arrive it will be fun to cook for all of them and the grandaughters want to learn to cook and sew. I hope that they will stay longer than 2 weeks though. I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving.

We have potatoes about ready to harvest plus our neighbor has given us a bunch of red potatoes from his garden and green beans, onions and okra. We pulled some of the onions which still need to grow and the radishes are about ready. We only have 2 cucumber plants but are getting plenty of cucumbers. Lots of yellow summer squash and yellow crook neck squash and even have had some cherry and regular tomatoes and some cabbage. The peppers are slow growing as is the egg plants. The garden is doing well because of all the rain that we have had. I am surprised things grow this well in the hard clay ground. When the potatoes are done plan to put some greens, spinach and winter cabbage in. I think the garden will do even better if we get a load of top soil in there before the spring.

Garden Bounty

We are already getting vegetables from out garden. This week it has been yellow squash, red and green lettece, romaine, zucchini and cucumbers. We had so much lettece we shared with friends. Picked head of romaine and red lettece yesterday. Chuck brought me one cherry tomatoe yesterday hopefully, we will have some tomatoes soon. We hope to plant some fall crops as well, like greens and such. The potatoes plants have flowers on them which means we have some potatoes to eat soon. The neighbor brought us some red potatoes from his garden nothing like fresh potatoes! We have a good variety of veggies out there to enjoy all summer. Fortunatley, we have been getting rain on and off and don't have to water the garden. We have city water here believe it or not. Well thats all there is for this time.

Hummingbirds

The hummingbirds are finally back again. They showed up as usual in early spring but then they just dissappeared. Not sure but maybe they were nesting away from here. This didn't happen last year - they came and stayed. Oh, well. We had to get two feeders - one for the back porch and another for the front porch. When too many get around they tend to drive each other away from the feeders. I took these pictures standing about 3 feet away from the feeder. Once they get used to you being around, they just carry on as usual unless you make a sudden move. They're neet to watch. They make all kinds of noise and they do have a song - of sorts. We have about 4 different Hummer families and they're all of the Ruby Throated variety.

This 'n That

Well, decided last week to go looking at trucks just to see what was out there and wound up with a new chevy truck. We paid less for this one than we did our last truck and got more truck to boot. The garden is slowly coming around. This is the first year that there has been a garden in the yard and the clay is almost like concrete. We put some top soil down to mix in but apparently not enough. Will remedy that next year. We have potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beets, radishes, pole beans, peppers, squash, egg plants, okra and onions. Recognize the thing that looks like an old outhouse. That's a toilet paper holder. The door opens and you can store up to 4 rolls of paper in it.