I just looked at the date of my last blog post. August 1st. August 1st!! That will not do!
Although considering the deliciousness of my last post, it was a fair assumption that I died of pure chocolatey happiness. If that is indeed what you thought. And yes chocolatey is a word. Even if my spell check says it isn’t.
To be completely honest I’ve been slaving away in a horrible messy kitchen, canning anything I can get my chubby fingers on. Does anyone else’s kitchen turn into a war zone when they’re canning? Anyone? No? Just me?
Hubby came home and quickly retreated to hide in the garage. There were jars lined everywhere, boxes of tomatoes and corn and cucumbers strewn around the floor. My hair was sticking out in every direction, and the dishwasher was trying to make it through the 10,000th load. He said the kitchen was scary. I told him not to run from crazy canning lady. He ran anyways. Wimp.
In all honesty though, when I’m canning, every surface is fair game for placing jars.
Or when I’m canning I dump the sugar and water into the electric kettle and boil it all in there to make syrup for peaches, and then just about put Hubby into a diabetic coma the next morning when he drinks his tea because I forgot to dump the rest of the syrup out.
When I’m canning I don’t brush my hair. Or wear perfume. Or even makeup. I’m a real looker – especially when there are tomato seeds in my eye brow. I do brush my teeth. I’m not a complete slob.
When I’m canning I get too distracted and end up skipping lunch. April + low blood sugar = extreme crabbiness. No wonder Hubby hides in the garage. I need a sign for the kitchen entrance that says Canning Zone. Enter at your own risk. That at least, would give the poor man some fair warning before he joyfully comes wandering into the kitchen after a long hard day at work only to meet a crazy crabby monster in the mess and not his usual happy to see him wife in her neatish kitchen. (Let’s be real, my kitchen is never neat and tidy. I do too much work in there for it to look like something from a magazine.)
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The goats and chickens have been enjoying the monster I have become. Every few hours I go trudging out there with a box (yes a box) of scraps for them to nibble on. They see me coming and all make a run towards me. Especially my gangsta hens – you know, the ones who break out of their enclosure to free range in my garden. They run right to my feet, and then it’s all I can do not to trip over them. I feel like they do it on purpose. If they can trip me, they get the entire load of goodness to themselves. Well so far you haven’t succeeded suckas! (I shall be very careful next time I go out there. If they hear I called them out, there may be a mutiny.)
I have also learned that male goats don’t eat scraps. Or at least mine don’t. My 3 does, and the chickens share the large paddock and my 2 males have a smaller one off to the side. When I toss corn husks into the female/chicken pen madness ensues as each species tries to eat more than the other. Does come running, knocking hens out of the way like bowling pins, roosters peck does in the nose, does step on chicken feet causing squawking. It’s a whole ordeal. Male goats just yawn and stretch as I toss tomato pieces in for them. They sniff at the bits and saunter away, tomato cores bouncing off their heads. Those 2 boys have the life. They eat and sleep. Stretch out and yawn. Energy is to be wasted only on munching hay. Maybe they know in a few months that all energy they have is going to go into baby making. They better be resting up. I’m hoping that 3 Birch Farm will be bursting with babies come spring. But I digress.
Yesterday I looked at my mother as we were waiting for my Nana to buy tomatoes at the farmers market. My mama canned everything when I was a kid. I took it for granted then. I told her I was sorry for never appreciating how much work went into our food. Because ya’ll as much as I love love love canned peaches during a blizzard in the middle of February, it sure is a lot of work. And it also seems to set off this other personality that only emerges during canning season – the crazy canning lady.
May you never have to see her in action.
HAHAHA! This is so me when canning or getting on any kind of cooking frenzy! Also, I have a VERY crabby side when I skip lunch do to the intensity with which I am working. I have learned to master the ‘oh I have to wait 5 minutes for that to boil I’ll clean a little bit of this mess up’ of course only to create it all over again in the same spot. It’s dizzying, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world!
Glad to hear I’m not alone! It is dizzying but totally worth it!
Holy, moley, this is so me right now. This evening, I finished the pizza sauce, only to realize the tomatoes I picked yesterday–YESTERDAY–are now ripe and will need to be processed within the next 24 hours, which will be…Friday night. Yep, I live on the wild side. But I love seeing all my jars of jams and pickles and relish and tomatoes–on my the TOMATOES–lined on the shelves, and knowing that my freezer is full of corn and berries and sauces.
This summer, I did double the number of jars of tomatoes and related tomato goodness, since sometime around the beginning of spring I found myself rationing what few jars were remaining. Hopefully, there will be no rationing during Spring 2017. (Fingers crossed.)
Every now and again, I think I’m almost caught up with canning, then I realize that there are still pears coming and apples are nearly here and too bad I don’t have any room in the freezer for the pumpkins.
But I love every single hot and sweaty second of it.