Still with the harvesty-ness

Thanks for everybody who shared the Little House love with me after the last post, and thanks for the great ideas about even more stuff to do. I found one way of solving my zucchini over-abundance--I stopped watering the garden. Hah! Way to be a problem solver, self.

Since last we spoke, I have been even more like an insane squirrel or ant or similar storing food for the winter. The problem was that it all happened at once. That day I went to pick blackberries, the owner asked if my friend and I wanted peaches too. Since I am not a great fool, I said yes. And then on the way home I remembered that corn season is almost over so I stopped at a roadside stand and bought three dozen ears of corn for freezing. Which means that I suddenly had two shoe boxes full of blackberries, at least a bushel of ripe peaches, and three dozen ears of corn that all needed to be dealt with kind of now.

And then that night there was a frost warning and I ran outside and picked all my peppers, jalapenos, and herbs. It was a little bit nuts in the kitchen, and when GH walked in and took a whiff of the four grocery bags full of herbs he did not react well. "Why does our kitchen smell like this? This is awful, I do not like it." And then possibly the cookie sheets of herbs in the freezer made our Aggie's Chocolate English Toffee ice cream taste like basil afterwards. Maybe. I'll deny everything.

And then boneless skinless chicken breasts went on this crazy sale and I bought two huge packages and then had like twenty chicken breasts to cook, shred, and freeze.

And then all the plums on my trees went for real ripe.

So. Out of that craziness I ended up with:

A quart of frozen diced jalapenos
A quart of frozen sliced bell pepper
A quart of frozen diced bell pepper
Bags and bags of frozen corn in my mother-in-law and sister-in-law's freezers
Bags of frozen, cooked, shredded chicken breast. (And a big thank you to Pinterest and my Kitchen-Aid--use the paddle attachment and dump the hot cooked chicken in there and BOOM, shredded.)
More blackberry jam
More peach jam
Quarts of frozen blackberries
Quarts of frozen peach slices
Frozen sage
Frozen basil
Frozen thyme
Four quarts of peach pie filling, except the poor peach slices got really battered and mashed up during the process and now it kind of looks like big jars of snot. This is why I stopped.
Jars of plum jelly
Jars of plum jam

In the middle of all of this I had myself a nice Mommy Guilt Breakdown. Because I was determined to have a productive day, the Tiny Dark Lord spent the morning watching the new Muppets movie and Laurie Berkner on repeat. Then it was lunch time, and then he napped all afternoon. I was thinking about how beautiful September is and realized that my poor child hadn't been outside in days. It was beautiful and warm out there and he was completely missing it and soon it would be so very cold for the rest of ever and going outside will be this huge big Randy-from-A-Christmas-Story-with-the-layers endeavor and he is going to die without loving nature and it's all my fault, etc.

my sweet boy, off to seek the Christ child

So. After that delightful realization, I've made some changes. The mornings are now for taking long walks outside, and things like canning and freezing and jamming are done during nap times and in the evening. I'm loving the walks, by the way. Not only are my legs starting to get reacquainted with this whole "exertion" idea, but I found my dream house. (And no, I can in no way afford it. Curse you, finished basements and upgraded kitchens!)

TDL likes the walks too. Not only do I keep an eye out for fallen apples for him to munch on, but he is making lots of animal friends. Today we tried a new route with my sister-in-law and passed a yard that had a goat, a pony, and a Shetland pony in it and they all came over to say hello. I may or may not have done my Mark Whalberg impression. "Hey goat . . "

And now it's apple season. Anybody have a favorite applesauce recipe?

source

Before I dive into that, though, I'm taking a break and hitting the Shakespeare Festival this weekend with Desmama and Emandtrev. We leave tomorrow morning and I'm so excited. It's all going to be so wonderful--the plays (we are seeing Les Miserables and Stones in His Pockets), the conversation with other adult women, hours and hours in the car to knit and chat, and, of course, the tarts.

Oh, tarts. Your lover returns . . .