Internal Warfare In Regards To Productivity

I have been pretty lazy with putting up food this year. We still have leftover broccoli (I put in 90-some plants last year) and pickles (I had put up 28 quarts of sweet and 27 quarts of dill, and, except for me, no one in my family really likes dills) and tomato sauces and chutneys. But canning and freezing is a lot of work, as you can imagine or already know—it’s easier just to pretend all that food isn’t out there. However, we’re moving into August where it won’t be as easy to evade the mounds of produce. Plus, I’ve been convicted by my amazingly productive friend.

So I suppose I best be getting my rear in gear. Things I should do today:

*Turn two bushels of Lodi apples into sauce.
*Turn a bunch of cucumbers into something… I’m not sure what yet.
*Harvest and freeze Swiss chard.
*Go pick more blackberries.

Now, the only thing I really must do is the applesauce, but I have got to push myself on the other tasks or they will all slide. And once they start slipping, they are pretty much gone. Didn’t get to the blackberries? Oh well. Missed the zucchini? Such is life. Didn’t keep after the basil plants? Shucks, I guess we just won’t have pesto this year. And so on. Like I said, it’s a slippery slope. Once the produce starts shooting down it, I might just as well join them for the ride because the gardening game is over. Whee!

Right now I’m perched atop that slippery slope. My toe is right over the edge, in fact. My butt would like to sit down and go for a breezy ride, but my head is frantically screaming instructions: Get that toe back! Back away from the edge! Turn around! Get busy! I normally respond very well to my head’s instructions. But my head is telling me to do a lot of work. And my butt is very comfortable sitting here on this wooden chair.

Oh yes, a couple more things my head is reminding me of: I need to call about getting corn and I would like to find a farmer who has extra green beans to sell, as we did not plant any of either crop this year. And I do so like green beans and corn. And peaches are coming in. And I want to do more applesauce later on, from a sweeter apple. And I have not yet mentioned tomatoes, have I? Why am I sitting here typing? I can hardly think for all the shouting going on in my head.

Before I go change into jeans and Mr. Handsome’s old flannel shirt and head out to pick berries, I have to show you a picture of what we had for dessert last night.

Remember the blackberry cobbler? This is simply the peach version of it. Yesterday, at the orchard where I got my apples, I also picked up a little bag of peaches, just to give us a taste. But, they were so good, and this cobbler was so delicious that now my head has gone absolutely berserk, telling me that we need to get at least four bushels of peaches to dry, can, freeze, and turn into jam. I would have been better off just ignoring that little bag of peaches. Now there is no possibility of discreetly nudging the peaches over the edge of the slippery slope. At least not this year.

So be careful. Once you start taking little tastes of fresh produce or putting some fresh fruit into a cobbler, you may just have unwittingly helped yourself to a big ol’ pile of work.