Slacker

Boy am I bad at this blog thing. Not that I think anyone notices or cares. My excuse is summer. All those things to do besides sitting down at a computer. We have had a pretty productive summer. Need to remember that we only need six pepper plants next year though. We have enough frozen to last into the next decade. Maybe not that much. Have to leave space in the freezer for the chili andtomato sauce since we ran out of bottles making salsa, spagetti sauce, elderberry jelly, choke cherry jelly, and whatever else. The tomatoes have gone crazy this year. Yesterday I spent all day cooking tomato sauce. I started with a five gallon bucket-full and ended up with about five quarts of sauce. If anyone wonders you have to cook it down that much so the sauce doesn't separate. You can tell when it is done because the layer of liquid on the top goes away. And so you don't take up as much freezer/bottle space. It is a bit strange for us to have tomatoes and corn out of the garden this late. It did attempt to freeze at the beginning of the month, but since then the weather has warmed up again. The only problem is we rely on irrigation water from the field for the garden and that is about over. And I have eaten so many cherry tomatoes that I have canker sores. It just needs to stay warm long enough to get the popcorn ripe. That was our experiment this year. So far what we have tried hasn't popped. Probably because it was just what we salvaged from the stalks Miss Polly the cow knocked over. Now that she is secured the rest should ripen in safety