You can tell you are too tired when you are worried about the berries being uncovered in a nice air conditioned room; because you are afraid bugs might get them.

  Good afternoon from the mountain, Just got in from outside, it is too hard for me to breath out there right now.  I am guessing it must be getting ready to rain.  I did get some nice photos though, so you can see the progress of visible pumpkins, I will not mess with ones in the big field, it seems like one I do the bugs find them.  I got some nice photos of some cucumbers and some tomatoes, and our peaches, both trees. 

First ripe Russian Black Krim tomato

Day Lillys

New potatoes in the box

View from front door

Small peach tree

Tomatoes love cucumbers

Mint

More onions almost ready to harvest.

Potatoes growing in sand.

Baby potatoes

Yard long beans

We have many fruit and nut trees and berry bushes here on the farm. Sometimes it makes things fun other times not so much.  Canning season is upon me and the blackberries are coming in by the bucket full. Michael picked at least a gallon already today. You can tell you are too tired when you are worried about the berries being uncovered in a nice air conditioned room; because you are afraid bugs might get them.  

So I am going to can a little latter tonight after the heat of the day has worn off, or maybe in the wee hours of the mourning.  It just needs to get done.  Those berries are not going to can themselves. So what I will do is do some quarts first, this means I will use four cups of sugar and 4 cups of water for the syrup, I like to use a heavy syrup so that I can use the berries for many different things in the winter.

I can use them as a topping for ice cream, cereal, or pancakes.  I can still use it to make pies and cobbler as well.  For quarts I will water bath can them for 20 minutes and pints for 15.  They make great gifts as well.  I need to put up two dozen quarts and two dozen pints, before I can pack some in bourbon.  I will water bath can them as well, but in place of the syrup, I will use the bourbon.  This is lovely for adult meals.  When all this is done I will make black berry jam.

By the time I have got this all done, it will be time for pickles, tomatoes and pears.  We put up nearly a hundred jars of pickles a year and as much tomatoes as I can grow.  The pears become pear butter and pie filling and this year I will do some in bourbon as well, and some cut up with syrup too I think. 

Our pear tree has been as huge blessing to us and I bless the people who planted more than 20 years ago, as it has provided a lot of yummy fruit for us over the years.  Some of the first fruit I canned on this farm came from that tree.  Last year we won first place at the country fair with them as well.

So today I have worked on putting my house in order and getting things ready to do canning, as well as fixing my website.  I got a good hour done on it.  I see that my transition to the cloud, by force of course has not gone well. It does not like front page formatting.  So at some point I will have to completely re-do each page, I just do not have it in me today.  It has taken me weeks just to get the program to work.

I think tomorrow I may try to get Skype to work again, it is hard to be away from so many of my friends and I really miss using it.  But hopefully I will get it working, I look silly sitting and talking to the computer without it…lol

Hamburgers and fresh corn on the cob for dinner tonight, and I must get to the task, so good bye for now dear ones.

Be Blessed

Shekhinah