The treadmill

We have not been posting much lately because our life has been pretty routine (you can read boring here if you want to) and we thought no one would really be interested. Nonetheless I thought I would give you a run down of what we have been up to. Tomatoes. Tomatoes. Tomatoes. We have been boiling them down and making salsa, spaghetti sauce and plain tomato sauce. We still have many batches to go but I see it coming to an end rapidly as the plants have succumbed to stink bugs and tomato blight. Last night we went out and picked every tomato that had potential for ripening. They are now sitting on the back porch waiting to ripen. Any that were too small or already had blemishes got tossed to the chickens. They thought Christmas had arrived in August. The wild mini tomatoes are still producing well, even though the plants look terrible. They are amazing little things.

Edemames have been patiently waiting for us to come out and harvest. A little extra time on the plant does not harm them so we hope to get to them in the next day or so. Fall lettuce has been planted as well as sugar snap peas and radishes.

Green beans are now coming in full bore. We already canned some and more will be done later this week; as soon as a full run is available for the canner. I wait until I have 7 quarts available to can as it just makes sense to heat up the kitchen for only full canners. We have also been eating them fresh which are always the best.

Crowder peas are beautiful this year. We had so many left from 2 years ago that we did not plant any last year. Then we ran out in the spring. So the stockpile is building and Patrick is happy to be shelling them.

Blackberries are coming to an end. They have been so good this year. Last year had soooo much rain and the moisture content made such a difference on the size of the berries. This year repeated itself with adequate rainfall so we once again had plump fruit.

Rainfall however causes us to mow the grass and then turn around and mow the grass again and then we look out at it is getting tall again and we have to mow again. UGH. We find it easier to split it into 2 days so it seems like every 3 or 4 days we are needing to spend about 45 minutes out on the tractor. Of course that also means we need to weedeat. If I were inclined to pay for any yard maintenance it would be for weedeating. It is messy and time consuming and only Patrick is able to do it as there is always potential for poison ivy on the perimeter of the property. That cost is way too high for me.

So as you can see we have been pretty dull around here. We go to work, come home and on second shift we are either in the kitchen or on the tractor. I have been able to get in my sewing room a bit and will share those projects in the near future. I looked at the calendar yesterday and started planning some getaway time. I think we are going to the beach at the end of September. Should still be nice enough weather but cooled off a bit. But until then I guess we will just stay on this treadmill and be thankful that God has so abundantly blessed us that we have plenty to keep us busy.