Much To Do, & Glad of It!!

It's probably a good thing the chicken I bought on sale ($.59 a pound!!) was still partly frozen. Otherwise, I would have felt compelled to can it tonight -- several hours' work, and I didn't arrive home until after 6:00. And there are still several pounds of apricots in the fridge, waiting to be canned (as jam or otherwise) or frozen (a good option, if you need to postpone the work for a little while). I did manage to make a batch each of nectarine jam and dill pickles last night, and a batch of peach jam this a.m.

And, in the garden, there are just about enough pickles for another batch of sweet relish, a couple dozen pint jars of which I need to make this year. It's astonishing how much work there is this time of year, for those of us who are determined feed ourselves and our families as cost effectively as possible. (Not to mention the quality...) I can appreciate how those ladies not that long ago must have felt, the first time they opened a can of peaches that hadn't cost them hours on their feet in the kitchen, arms itchy with peach fuzz (and, very likely, itching also from bug bites obtained while picking the fruit), sweat pouring down their faces, children underfoot.

I'm very grateful to have the ability, physically and mentally, to have learned the various arts (canning, dehydrating) necessary for storing food. There is a huge amount of work to be done at the moment, and I'm doing my best to do it -- even if it occasionally means dashing home at lunchtime to start a batch of pickles, as I did earlier this week. Much work, but very satisfying, too!