A Hint Of Fall

Hello, friends.  After an appointment in town, I picked up an order for J at Tractor Supply, stopped by the vision center to check on his glasses order, then stopped for groceries.  There were no fantastic sales, but I got avocados for .89 and cans of organic pinto beans for .99.  On the way home, I stopped at a local orchard for peaches.  I've tried several from the stores, and they've all been awful this year, because they pick them so early.  They were pricy, but I'm hoping they'll be worth it.  (Update: they were good peaches, hooray).  From the garden, I harvested tomatoes, a pepper, tromboncino squash, an eggplant, and a cucumber.  

I weeded all the eggplant in the main garden.  Lately, I've been adding at least two items to the thrift store box every week.  There will be more than usual this week, as I'm going through the clothes we have for our granddaughter, and she's pretty much outgrown everything.  I'm slowly but surely decluttering.  J bought 200 canning lids online, which came during the week.  Though we were already good for this year, you never know what the coming year will hold.  I'm seeing so many posts and videos about food shortages, it's concerning.  Please make sure you have a stocked pantry, rotate food and replace it as you use it.  We're surely living in interesting times.  We're getting low on rolled oats, so I ordered a 50# bag from the co-op we often shop at.  

Though I'd asked J to plant just enough beans for fresh eating this year, I'm harvesting more than a meal's worth daily, which is several times too many.   I guess I'll soon be adding to the number of jars already on the shelf.  That's not a terrible problem to have, but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and exhausted this week.  There hasn't been a lot of sleep, due to one of the pups, in addition to feeling stressed.  This too shall pass.  Elderberries were harvested again.  I found some lovely heads in the chicken yard.  We've been letting elderberry and mulberry volunteers grow in the chicken yards, and this is the first harvest of these elderberries.

A bag of winter squash cubes was pulled from the freezer, for soapmaking.  With fall approaching, it was time to make a batch of Pumpkin Chai.  There was still plenty of squash left, so I made a double batch of dog treats, and Jackie Clay's Minnesota Harvest Bars with the rest.  The recipe is in her book, Growing & Canning Your Own Food.   A pint jar of tomatoes that didn't seal and tomato juice from canning were used in pasta sauce, with our herbs and onions.  Another day, tomatoes were canned.  I reprocessed a jar that didn't seal, and canned tomato juice, along with catching up on the tomatoes that needed canning.  The following day, I canned 7 jars of yard long beans, a mix of quarts and 20 oz jars with straight sides, which work well for beans.

A small tromboncino was used in a dish with quinoa, avocado and our onion.  My favorite tomato, cucumber and black olive salad went with it.  A frugal fail this week was with an order we recently had.  There was miscommunication between the customer and I, and though she was equally at fault, I took the burden of the blame, and we'll lose any profit.  Having a happy customer is worth a lot, though.  We've never gotten anything other than the best (5 star) review in our shop, and I don't want that to change if I can help it.  I've been trying to return some items we had gotten the wrong size of.  The first email I sent was in May, following the instructions they gave for returns.  As I had not had a reply to any of my emails, I did a review on them last week, giving them one star.  They quickly responded, and I got an email response a few hours later, along with a return label.

We received some much needed rain, as we haven't had a good rain for weeks.  We got 3/4", which all soaked in.  I was hoping it would replenish our creek, but I'm thankful to get what we did.  The plants are obviously happier.  For a dinner, pasta sauce was made with our tomatoes, squash, garlic, onions, rosemary and basil.  On a day the guys were working in VA, I decided to have a self-care day.  I gave myself a pedicure, cut a bouquet, and did some spiritual work.  The garden and animal chores were done, but otherwise, I focused on myself, which recharged me a bit.  Beans were shared with friends, who came to pick up our sofa to reupholster.   Lots of orders were washed, in preparation for powder coating them.  Included is the first stand we are shipping to Australia.  It's pretty exciting to be sending our work around this beautiful world.   Wishing you a week of peace and prosperity.