Thursday, August 4, 2022

Not enough energy and too many hours in the day. and some bad news at end

Yesterday I had 42 items on do now list. Last night it was down to 27...my allergies are really affecting my breathing. Doc is at wits end as I have never had them this bad. Limited on what I can take as a good part of allergy meds triggers my Crohn's and shots don't work for me.

Hubby's garden is growing 3 varieties of pumpkin, a cherry tomato plant and a muskmelon. And some type of squash that isn't far enough along to ID. He had one of the Amish he hauls for that grows veggies for the auction to come over and look and get advice. He was told to level the hill off after harvest and have E bring a load of manure and dump it on it. Don't turn until next spring.




 The green pumpkin should turn orange but if not it is still edible.

The white pumpkin is almost ripe, it will be like a butternut inside. 

 Blackberries have finally ended. I have 2 gallons marked to jam making this coming fall. 

Jade green beans are cranking down, Roma green beans and yellow wax beans are cranking up. About every 3 days I get a canner load.

Hungarian peppers AKA banana peppers are every other day. I need to process today. I have enough pickled so am slicing what isn't eaten and freezing. Should work well on pizzas and subs.

Cherry tomatoes are running us over, froze a gallon of them, will be roasting some with olive oil and garlic powder to put in freezer today along with going out to pick more.

The baby butternut squash is making babies... lots of babies LOL

The Yukon gold potatoes are almost ready for harvest and curing. 

I need to finish cutting the tops off the onions that cured to make room for the potatoes as we have 59 bags/crates planted of different varieties . 

We ate a cantaloupe that was a volunteer... the wildlife ate the other one. 

I harvested and froze our first harvest of white grapes. I think the birds are going to eat the purple ones before they get ripe.

I hope to have enough red tomatoes to can today. I have orange tomatoes that I can do 2 pints.

M gave me 6 zucchini that needs to go in the freezer also.

I found chicken breast on sale putting it in our price point range . We got the limit. I need to vacuum bag them today. IF I find another  sale I will pick up more but if I don't , it is okay we have enough for once a month for a year. 

I found ground pork for less than $2/lb. Got the last 5 pounds they had. Now have 7 meals of cooked crumbles, 6 meals of patties (need vacuum bagged) and we ate one pound that I used a DIY Bob Evans sausage recipe. I regret there was NO grease so I couldn't make sausage gravy with the left over 2 patties. 

I have tricolor rotini to change from the box to jars to put in storage.

The good news was we were paid back from a friend  so we have all the money for the grid down items and was able to stock... we thought KEY WORD THERE thought all we had left to save for was health ins out of pocket for 2023... WRONG.

Took our personal truck to get it's 6 month check over by our mechanic. Thought we had a brake messing up as we heard a crunch, grind noise. NOPE 

THE frame is rusted almost out and we need to replace the truck, probably by winter. We already learnt the lesson of buying something just to have something (hated the car but Daughter 4 loved it so bought it off us). We know we need a truck as we haul a small trailer behind about half the time and we don't want to use the work truck for personal use(nightmare with taxes).  Hubby said something about used... I checked those prices and decided we would save for new. If we don't have enough save when the truck goes down, we might settle for used. BUT I am thinking if we can manage it I would rather buy one that is 1 yr. old so we are not replacing it for 10-20 yrs. 

We will see how this one goes.