The Best Day Ever

Susan and I spent most of Saturday in the garden and kitchen. It was great!

We started around 8:30 with a walk to get plums. This is our first time harvesting plums though we have known about them for a couple years. With two little girls helping us, we actually picked the plums, spilled them, and picked them up again.  But in the end, we ended up with enough to yield six cups of pitted ground plums. More on that later.

Walking back, we decided we better get into the tomato patch to get rid of bad ones and pick the good ones. It was hard to not notice some green peppers that were ready, so we picked those. Then we could see cucumbers and found quite a few small ones to make those little pickles.

After checking the carrots and picking a few of those, we moved on to green beans. As we were finishing those up, we noticed our broccoli was ready too.

Eventually we decided our other plans had to be put on hold so we could process a bunch of this food.

Susan made five pints of salsa creating her own recipe in the process. I don't know why we canned all of them, we should have just started eating one.

After cleaning a few of the vegetables, I spent hours watching college football while simultaneously pitting plums. I ended up with eight jars, some pints some half pints, of a tasty plum jam with allspice.

I also made a couple more quarts of pickles when I was done with the jam.  I postponed green beans until the next day, but managed four more quarts of beans out of this picking.

Susan and I were commenting during all of this how much fun we were having.  She even felt guilty since we had other things "to do" and we had put them on hold.

In reality, we were doing what we needed to do.  We were collecting and preserving food that would feed our family for the near future.  In the process, we got our excercise in and didn't even have to pay a gym membership.  Plus it was just the two of us with plenty of time to talk and visit.

Sure four cans of green beans and a couple jars of jelly could have been purchased in much less time for only a little more money.  We find that we enjoy the time together and feel good about the work we do in providing for our food.  Instead of going somewhere else to work all day, and then using that AFTER TAX money to buy food, we will continue to eat as much as we can that is grown, harvested, or hunted on the east half of the southwest quarter....