The part of gardening that I enjoy is the processing, not the growing, and since there are plenty of local farms that will happily sell me produce in bulk, this year I decided I could just purchase from them and save myself the trouble. Besides, I figured we’re already doing plenty by producing our own pork and beef, dairy, and eggs, so if I’d rather spend my time making cheese instead of pulling weeds, then why not. I don’t need to do everything, right? I’m aiming for community sufficiency here, not self sufficiency. 

CSA treasures

So we nixed the garden for this year, and it was a huge relief (and saved us much marital strife), so we’ll probably nix it for the next year, too.

mint tea, eggs, yogurt

eggs, eggs, eggs

strawberry freezer jam

CSA leftovers

buttah

I still canned and froze a few things, though, as you’ll see… 

Stats

• Mint Tea Concentrate: a bunch, made by my younger son
• Strawberries from Woods Edge, 18 pounds: 14½ quarts, frozen; 2-3 gallons whole berries, frozen
• Strawberries from our garden: 2 batches berry sauce, 12 pints freezer jam
• Sour Cherries: 12 1-cup bags frozen; 5 quarts sweetened juice; 7 quarts bounce, 3½ pints jam, 5 gallons mead
• Wild Wineberries: 2½ quarts
• Cauliflower and Broccoli from Season’s Bounty: 5 pints, frozen
• Peaches, Glohaven (2 bushels): I didn’t make notes! 20 quarts? 30? I have no idea!
• Red Raspberries: 21 quarts, frozen
• Corn from Clover Hill (processed with family): 40 pints for us
• Tomatoes: 8 quarts and 6 pints salsa, 6 quarts chopped tomatoes, 22 pints roasted pizza sauce
• Grapes: 8 pints jelly, 12 quarts juice, 5 gallons mead, 1 gallon wine
• Applesauce: 28 quarts
• Lard: 5 quarts and 7 pints
• Broth (pork, chicken, turkey): 25+ quarts
• 2 pigs: bacon, Canadian bacon, ground pork, hams, roasts, sausages (classic, breakfast, Italian)
• Cheeses: 40 hard cheeses, plus ricottas, yogurt and yogurt cheese, mozzarella, etc.

sour cherry bounce

family corn day

applesauce

Gruyère

meads and wines

broth

The Notes
*My younger son continued his summer CSA gig so we had fresh produce all summer. 

*Our strawberries have gotten increasingly smaller so after this year’s piddly harvest, my husband tilled up the patch.

*We got a lot of our apples from an orchard in Pennsylvania (close to my grandparents’ house), and we got about 16 gallons of cider from a local orchard here — to freeze for winter popcorn suppers and then an extra 5 gallons for a batch of cyser.

*Along with the grape, apple, and sour cherry meads, I also started 5-gallon batches of spiced cranberry mead and red raspberry and rhubarb mead. 

*Even though we were out of pickles, I didn’t make any. We found some decent dills at a discount grocery (99 cents a jar) and bought a flat of them. We’re missing our 7-day sweets something fierce, though, so they’re top of the list for next year’s canning projects.

*We didn’t do any green beans because I thought frozen Costco green beans would be tasty enough, but nope, no one here likes them. I guess we’re left with no recourse but to grow our own!

*We’re out of pesto, too. Next year… (This no growing anything plan doesn’t appear to be shaping up too well.)

*The sweet corn this year has been incredibly delicious. We’ve been eating a lot of corn.

*We’re still eating our beef from several years ago, and now we have the pork from Fern and Petunia. Along with the cuts I listed above, we have about 8 more boxes of fat that need to be rendered into lard. (The lard I listed above came from just one of those boxes.) We’ve currently got two more piggies fattening up; they should be ready to butcher spring of 2025.

lard

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (12.26.22), wedding weekend: the officiation, chocolate bourbon pie, a Christmas spectacle, 2018 book list, sex for all creation, 2015 book list, hot buttered rolls.

How about a game of good news bad news?

First, the bad: A COVID recap, in pictures.

another one bites the dust

the sickly trio

cough-cough

But now for some good: I have energy and an appetite, whoo-hoo!

I totally lost my appetite for the majority of the week I was sick and it was the weirdest thing because I never lose my appetite. Even when I’m nauseated and can’t stand the thought of food, I’m still bothered by the fact that I can’t stand the thought of food, you know? But this time I didn’t even care. Like, zero interest. I’d get raging hungry but the thought of eating was just . . . pfft, why bother? I DID NOT KNOW MYSELF. I’m still not that excited to cook but I’m getting the most glorious hankerings for peanut butter captain crunch, potato chips, coffee, mandarines, chef salads, pizza, wine.

Also good: I went for a walk yesterday — my first walk since COVID — with a girlfriend, and then I went for a run today and only had to stop once to blow my nose!

Aaaaand. . . now we’re back to the bad: Yesterday when I was leaving my friend’s house I backed into her trashcan and busted my taillight.

Which was more funny than upsetting because it was such a silly-stupid mistake and not too much of a problem (for me) since my husband can — and does — fix anything. So I just giggled.

But then last night I dribbled candle wax all over my brand new wireless keyboard (my husband cleaned it up — are we sensing a pattern here?) and then today I dropped the stapler when I was getting it out of the cupboard and smashed my computer screen. 

The break was so startling and tragically definitive that I didn’t even bother to get upset. I just snapped another photo and sent it to my husband.

He called right away. “So does this mean you’re getting a new computer now?”

This is the part that could be interpretted as good news, if you’re feeling desparate (and I am). See, I’ve been planning to get a new laptop (the busted one is from 2017 and and struggles to keep up with my mad video editing skills) so I’ve already done lots of research and pretty much know eactly what sort of fancy machine I want to get, which helps to take some of the stress out of this computer crisis.

FURTHERMORE, I just bought a monitor for video editing which means I can now hook up my busted computer to the monitor and still get stuff done, but — bad news — the new monitor is crap.

However! I figured out the extent of its monitor-y crapiness the same day I bought it and yesterday I ordered a new monitor which will be coming tomorrow. So again, good news.

In conclusion, the stapler is moving to a new location, far far away from any computer screens. The End.

P.S. I discovered that the gas station on the way out of town sells doughnuts and now I can get trashy gas station doughnuts whenever I want, which is very good news indeed.

This same time, years previous: wedding weekend: the pinning, the coronavirus diaries: week forty-two, rock on, Mama!, 2016 book list, old-fashioned sour cream cake doughnuts, the quotidian (12.22.14), Christmas pretty.

I always figured I’d get the virus at some point. I mean, I got all the vaccines and masked up and socialized outdoors, but I was never the overly-cautious sort and once vaccines were available, I frequently fudged the rules because I couldn’t bring myself to get my panties in a wad over preventing something that everyone seemed to get anyway. But still, I kept not getting it and not getting it and not getting it which was truly wonderful but also made me feel sort of left out, like, what was wrong with me that I couldn’t get what everyone else was getting? And then I started wondering if I was invincible, my blood cells ironclad-protected against the coronavirus, but —

Oops, guess not!

I had sniffles for a couple days, and then suddenly a fever. I didn’t think anything of it — colds are going around — until 24 hours later when I took my grassy-tasting cannabis drops to help my fever-seized body relax enough to sleep and realized I couldn’t taste them. At all. Two tests later — one expired and one not — and it’s confirmed: I am not invincible. Well DARN.

It’s actually not been that bad, really. More like a bad cold with fevers, thank you, vaccines! The worst part is the intense boredom that comes with feeling sick enough not to do anything but not sick enough to not care.

My mom brought me cough drops and COVID tests and a pint of incredible soup packed with veggies and a wonderfully seasoned broth that I couldn’t taste but scarfed down nonetheless. My daughter picked up citrus and saltines from the store. I’ve continued to drink my morning coffee (something I don’t do when deeply ill) and turn eight gallons of milk into cheese two days running, started a couple pints of fermented lemon honey, parbaked some pie crusts, made chili, painted my nails, made crack, and watched so many Netflix I nearly melted my eyeballs. 

Speaking of Netflix, have you seen Million Dollar Decorators?

It’s such a marvelously smutty show — Schitt’s Creek come to life, I kid you not — and the absolute best thing to watch when sick. Here are five takeaways:

1. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s not tacky.
2. Rich people get PLAYED.
3. Interior design is a gift.
4. It’s delicious fun to call everyone “Dah-ling.”
5. I lovelovelove my house.

I binged almost the whole show in one day and then I made my older daughter watch the first episode with me when she came out to visit. 

Speaking of my older daughter…

I gave her a concussion. 

Before y’all report me: IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. And actually, it was half her fault. We ran into each other when playing Ultimate: her head and my shoulder, SMACK. The collision sounded quite impressive, but I felt fine and she just laughed, shook it off, and continued to play. But afterward she took a nap and then called to say she was still alive, and I was like, Wait, something’s wrong? By that evening, her head was hurting pretty bad. 

light reduction techniques
^{photo credit: my older daughter}

Monday, she didn’t work with my husband or drive, and she slept all day. That evening my younger daughter fixed her up a supper basket and hung out with her for a few hours.

Lil Red, minus the wolf and cape

She didn’t work on Tuesday, and she only made it several hours in the dishpit on Wednesday before the pain was too much: dizzy, sore teeth, and sharp headachy pain behind the right eye even though I’d hit her on the left side.

^{photo credit: my older daughter}

By that point I was beginning to wonder if I should be concerned, so my husband asked our son to swing by her house after work. Just look at her eyes, we said. Make sure there’s no brain bleed. (The kid lives by herself so how were we to know if she was slurring and staggering?) Our son gave her a thorough neurological assessment and pronounced her sound, BUT he benched her for the rest of the month, much to her enormous dismay. (That we’re already halfway through the month has not appeased her one bit, silly girl.)

Anyway, COVID.

paying me a visit, i.e. interrupting my workflow

The loss of taste only lasted about 36 hours, thank goodness, and I only had periodic fevers for two days, again, thanks to the vaccines.

even without taste, the texture of crack is delicious

Which brings me to my next question: do I still need to get my COVID booster this year? I haven’t yet gotten my vaccine (it’d be my fourth) or my flu shot for this year. After that long month of dental woes, I haven’t found it within myself to set aside a few days to feel (potentially) unwell from vaccines. But now that I’ve gotten COVID, does that mean I’ve been naturally inoculated for the season? At this point, wouldn’t another vaccine be kinda redundant?

Either way, I guess I still need to muster up the courage to get the flu vaccine. Two full days of Netflix is about all this woman can handle for one winter. 

This same time, years previous: rosemary asiago cheese, wedding whirl, how we homeschool: Terra, croissants, sour candied orange rinds, science lessons, the quotidian (12.15.14), bits of goodness, soft cinnamon sugar butter bars, cracked wheat pancakes.