Stlll here

Finding time to spend on the computer isn't happening much these days. It's just too busy around these parts. In previous years, summer meant long, hot days, iced tea and lemonade, sunburned skin, late night swims to cool off before bed, and lots of campfires in the backyard. This year? It means long hot days spent in the kitchen, feet and legs that ache from standing barefoot on a hard tile floor for 14+ hours most days of the week, canning jars, dehydrators, and freezer bags. It means baking all day long Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and trips to the farmers' market Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to sell it all.

I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Hard work is satisfying. Painfully, even excruciatingly so.

Not that I haven't always worked hard, mind you, but I'm feeling such a sense of pride in preserving food for my family to enjoy during the cold winter months. Not an arrogant pride. It's just, I don't know... satisfying and comforting all at once. Grocery money has been spent on canning jars because our food bill goes way down when we're eating fresh from the garden. It's a wonderful trade.

I love learning new things, and this year it has been dehydrating. For a large family with no basement or garage to store canned goods, dehydrating is a dream. I'm able to take advantage of cheap, and even free produce, and preserve it with little effort for the coming months. The dehydrator runs for just pennies an hour, and doesn't heat the house up. I'm looking forward to cold mornings and making steel cut oats with apples and pears that I put up this summer.

As evidenced by my ever changing and growing Preparing for Winter list on my sidebar, I'm still canning many, many jars of foodstuffs, and enjoying every minute of it. It thrills me to know that we have enough green beans and corn to have them once a week until next year's harvest. I've never in my life worked this hard over the summer, but it's all good.