Canning in the heat

I'm finally getting around to doing a bit of canning this season.  This year has so far not been our best year as far as eating locally and preserving the harvest.  I'm hardly cooking at all, and our meals are most often determined by what is the easiest and quickest thing to prepare.  I'm working many more hours right now than I was at this time last year, and it's taken a lot out of me.  But that's what weekends are for, right?!

This weekend I canned a bushel of peaches.  The first five quarts were done yesterday... and then I forgot about them in the canner, on the grill, boiling away, for six hours.  They are very, very well cooked now.  I figure we can at least use them in smoothies, but they won't be the tender but firm, delicious-straight-from-the-jar canned peaches that got us through this past winter.  The five quarts I canned today (and didn't forget about) came out just fine, though!

I am also in the process of canning pasta sauce.  It's been simmering on the grill for two hours now and isn't even close to being thick enough... I'm just hoping to get it thickened by the time I go to bed tonight.  I can always reheat it and process it in the jars tomorrow afternoon when I get home from work.  But the little porch of our smokehouse smells absolutely incredible right now, rich with tomatoes, garlic and basil. 

Our Ameraucana rooster, Fritz, has finally started crowing.  He's a randy thing, but so far has proven to be fairly gentle.  The ladies think he is quite the dashing gentleman, whereas Bowie, the Polish rooster, is more of the skinny rockstar bad boy who has yet to find his voice.  I have confidence that he'll get a little flock of his own groupies in time.

We adopted a pair of Muscovies last week.  They're only four months old and they're HUGE.  This is the female, who we haven't yet named.  I think she's lovely.

They seem to be fitting in with the ducks quite well.  All five of them are out on the water, splashing about and being duck-like.  For a while the ducks would only spend ten minutes on the pond and stream before they'd flipflap their way back up the hill, quacking to be let back into the fenced run.  Now they've remembered that they're ducks, and spend the whole day being lazy and swimming.

One of our silver laced Wyandottes.  She looks MAD.

Another recently adopted addition, a Frizzle Serama, who we have taken to calling Frizzle Fo Shizzle.  It is hilarious to see this tea-cup-sized hen try to sit on top of the big girls' eggs.  She's adorable.

I had better get back out there to stir the pasta sauce... thanks for checking in!

Absence

I apologize for my poor blog maintainance over this past month.  It's been a busy one... festivals every other weekend, stressful 12-hour-long days in the ER, and heat that just won't quit. 

I'm finding my way at my job, slowly but surely.  Some days are better than others.  I always come home exhausted... but some days, I come home exhausted and satisfied rather than exhausted and defeated.  I take that as a good sign.

A hawk attacked our ducks while they were on the pond this past week.  Little Coyote got a scratch on her neck, but it could have been much, much worse. 

Bowie, our little silver laced polish bantam, is a boy, it turns out.  He started crowing from atop the duck house this week.  I suppose that his name suits him, as he is an androgynous as the man he was named for!

The garden is a mess.  I haven't had time to get out there to weed, so grass is poking up all over the place in the beds where I haven't mulched.  I'd say that this weekend would solve that problem, if not for 105 degree temps that make weeding a dangerous endeavor. 

I'm in full wedding planning mode now, with less than three months to go.  Our invitations came from the printer, and they are beautiful.  Honeybunch reserved the full kilt ensemble that he's renting for the big day... and boy is he going to look handsome.  Today we're going to have our fingers sized so that we might order our rings from the talented folks on Etsy who will be making them for us.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/60678674/juglans-nigra-thin-lipped-wedding-set

Everything is coming together, and once we have the tent, tables, chairs and linens rental paid for, it's all just details from then on.

I can't wait for October!