A Spicy, Saucy, Corny Post About Last Week

Busy, busy, busy! It's late summer "on the farm", and we're doing a lot of canning and preserving as the garden and fruit trees start sharing generously with us. Tuesday was Salsa Day. Dad and I made 22 pints of wonderful homegrown salsa, using baskets and bags full of just-picked tomatoes, peppers, and tomatilloes. Hooray for homemade salsa!






Wednesday was Apple Butter Day, starting bright and early with picking two full bushels of Whitney crabapples from Mom and Dad's front yard tree. Then the kids amused themselves admirably ALL DAY LONG while the grownups cut, trimmed, pared, cooked, stirred, seasoned, jarred, and processed no fewer than 40 jars (of various sizes) of apple butter. It is SO YUMMY!














That brings us to Thursday, which was CORN DAY (it deserves all caps, trust me). We picked, shucked, blanched, cut kernels, bagged and froze 4 full wheelbarrows of sweet corn throughout one long, very hardworking day. Aunt Betty and Uncle Duane came to help, which is the only reason we got so much done. By the end of the day, we had put away 147 bags (2 cups each) of sweet corn kernels. If you check the math on that, it amounts to ... brace yourself ... 18.375 GALLONS of corn kernels. It tastes so good. We're going to enjoy that all winter long! If you're wondering why anyone would ever put away that much corn, consider that we haven't had a good sweet corn harvest for 3 years due to weather, illness, events, and new babies that have interfered with the successful growing and tending of the corn.




Yes, that is an entire trash barrel full of empty corn cobs. We processed A LOT of corn. Dad estimated it was over 800 cobs. In two previous pictures, Lily and Henry are gleefully helping to flatten out the vacuum-sealed bags of corn. That way they stack better in the freezer, take up less space, and defrost/cook faster when it's time to use them. But most importantly, it's FUN to pound on those bags to flatten them!