So, you ask, how did it go? Was I productive, or did I slip over the edge and go for a breezy ride? The short answer is: I got my rear in gear, yesserie, I surely did. The long answer is as follows…

Part One: The Blackberries

I picked berries for about an hour and a half. I was all by myself, out in the woods. You would think this would be a good thing because it’s quiet and meditative and all, but I have a problem with a wild imagination, and my imagination was stuck on snakes. Rattlesnakes, to be specific. I kept imagining that there was a snake down at my feet in the undergrowth and that when I reached my hand down to pick a blackberry—ka-zing!—it would bite me. It was a little unnerving, to say the least. At one point I was sure I heard the warning rattle. I knew it was just the brambly bushes rubbing against my bucket, but I was certain it was a rattlesnake. So I quickly left that spot, all the while laughing at myself for being so foolish at the same time I was congratulating myself for such quick thinking.

It’s a confusing job, being me.

Part Two: The Applesauce
Back at the ranch, Mr. Handsome was in the middle of making applesauce with all four little ones underfoot. Mr. Handsome has an interesting (isn’t that a nice way of putting it?) trait of always trying to reinvent the wheel. This time around he got it in his noggin (kind of like I had snakes in my noggin) that it would be faster to cut the ends out of the apples before cutting them in half, and then, instead of cutting them, to smash them.

I took a gander at his process and went inside to cut up apples the real way. After scorching his 16 quart pot of sauce (not necessarily because they were mushed apples, but we don’t know that for sure), and after a temper tantrum (we won’t go into detail here), he slunk in and silently joined me in cutting up the apples in the good old-fashioned way.

The following photograph is deceiving. It looks like we are all working calmly and quietly together, right?

Actually, everyone is talking loudly, apples and seeds are flying, arguments are breaking out, orders are being shouted. Now you have the real picture.

Mr. Handsome made a big show of checking the temperature of the water and the temperature of the sauce before putting the jars in the canner. I scoffed at him, told him I just did it by feel, so the second time around, he didn’t use a thermometer and the bottom of one of the jars broke off, releasing a quart of applesauce into the boiling water. Apparently, he didn’t test the temperature of the water with his finger, either.

Intermission Number One:
For lunch, while I was making egg-bacon-and-cheese sandwiches on toast, I carelessly sloshed a bunch of uncooked, scrambled egg and it immediately disappeared down the crack between the stove and counter. At the end of the day, Mr. Handsome had to pull the whole stove out and then he cleaned up my mess, like the dearie he is.

Oh yes, I also made another cobbler, using blackberries and peaches. It’s a really good recipe, my friends—you gotta try it.

Part Three: The Swiss Chard
Miss Becca Boo helped me pull some of the Rainbow Swiss Chard.

I washed it in the big metal tub out on the porch, cut the long stems off, dried the leaves on towels, cut out the tough center stems, rolled the leaves up and cut them in thin strips and then cross-wise, and packed the chopped chard in freezer boxes. Come winter, we won’t die of scurvy now.

Intermission Number Two:
In our family it is mandatory that you make a gingerbread when you make applesauce. Quoting from Applesauce, the children’s book my mother wrote:

There was gingerbread to stir up, too. The mother always made it on applesauce days. Supper would be just a whole big gingerbread, and milk, and all the sweet, wonderful applesauce everyone could hold.

So see, I had to make it. So I did. And that was supper (though later, when it was getting close to bedtime, the kids did have tomato sandwiches).

Grace’s Gingerbread
(Yep, the same Grace of the Vanilla Pudding recipe)

½ cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup baking molasses
3/4 cup hot water
2 1/4 cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat well. Add the molasses and hot water and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix until they are incorporated into the wet ingredients. Pour the batter into a greased 9×9 pan (it will be quite full), and bake at 325 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Serve warm with fresh applesauce.

Part Four: The Bread and Butter Pickles
At five o’clock I was about ready to call it quits, but unfortunately, I had mentioned the cucumbers to you all and so I felt obligated to do something with them. I mean, you all were watching and waiting, wondering if it could get it all done, right? It felt like a sort of test. Was I strong enough? Could I handle the pressure?

So, I whipped up a batch of bread and butters. Considering all I had already accomplished that day, it didn’t feel like any big deal.

Mr. Handsome and I got the kids tucked in bed, and then, while the pickles were in the canner, we finished watching the DVD we had started watching the night before, Amadeus. All I have to say about that, besides the fact that it is a very good movie, is that I’m very glad I’m not gifted. Three cheers for mediocrity! (Mr. Handsome and I keep trying to imitate Wolfie’s high-pitched giggle—it’s harder to do than you would think.)

In conclusion, it appears that my bossy head won out over my lazy butt, at least this time.

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.

Get him! Hold his legs! Don’t let go!

His feet! Grab his feet!

Yes! We got him!

Wah!

Hold up, guys. That’s enough.

It’s all fun and games until someone (in this case, The Baby Nickel) gets hurt.

The End.