Category: HOPES

Plans for Summer Canning & Freezing

I’ve took a good look at the cellar shelves, and I do have a little canning I must do this summer. We’ve planted the potatoes and onions so all we do is wait for them and a productive summer.

Onions and potatoes are in the ground and we’re waiting on the ground to get warmer to plant the beans and corn.

The list isn’t long, and all depends on the weather and how well the garden grows. The top of the list is green beans, and we’ll need at least six canners of seven quarts. It will be at least the end of May before they go in the ground leaving me a late July or early August to get those canned. We usually have good luck with growing beans here and we are cutting back some this year. They’re so easy to can! I’ll have my instructions on my canning/preserving page.

The list for preserving is fairly long but not anything unusual. It includes green beans, corn, pinto beans, sauces (i.e., barbecue, tomato, pizza and spaghetti), pickle relish, carrots, sweet green and banana peppers, sweet potatoes, squash and pumpkin. The squash and pumpkin will be winter hardy and stored in the cellar in baskets on the floor. I have plenty of pumpkin already canned and the sweet potatoes will be bought at a farmers’ market because I never can find the plants early enough to get them grown and cured before first frost. This is my normal preserving along with any fruit we harvest. This year we had four heavy frosts and two freezes while the fruit was blooming and I’m very thankful I canned all of it last year.

Hopeful to fill like I did in 2021 and 2022!!! Mother Nature will help make that happen.

2023 Hopes

I started the year with a Bucket List which so far is going well, and my daily planner keeps me on track. I also have so many “hopes” for this new year with the first month almost gone. Time sure flies when you’re almost 70 and when did that happen???

These are my top 20 hopes for 2023:

  1. A smile for everyone I meet and talk too, leave’em laughing is a good thought!!
  2. Visits to friends that never seems to get accomplished due to weather, pandemics, gas prices, time, and any other excuses that render themselves to me. I have six friends that live within 60 miles of me that I HOPE to see this year.
  3. A cure for Covid, cancer, and Alzheimer’s! That’s not too much to hope for when scammers can invade our lives!!! Is the cure already out there and big money is holding it back????
  4. To see our grandson at least four times this year and maybe even spend a week with us or his Dad. Every month is hoping too much with the busy lives of the parents but I’m so afraid he’ll forget us or grow up too fast which I know he is already doing!!!
  5. Hope that our granddaughter complete’s yet another degree/certificate in her field of education. Fifth graders love her and that tells me she knows what she is doing in her classroom.
  6. That nothing gets anymore of my fowl!!! Something got one of my ducks three days ago in the daylight hours. Predators are brazen and apparently hungry!! I’m left with a duck and drake and will miss those two eggs every morning from the ducks.
  7. To have a very impressive growing season in my greenhouse and garden. The cellar shelves need filling again.
  8. For a plan to stop ALL of the senseless killings in our country that can’t be entirely blamed on the guns. Guns don’t pull triggers by themselves.
  9. For my family to stay well and HAPPY! We ended the year with lots of sickness for the kids and grandkids.
  10. To complete the fencing in the pasture field that we started in December.
  11. To grow a bigger stack of firewood than we had this year. We’ve used over half of the pile and it was one of our biggest in a while. We forgot how cold and windy it can be but hasn’t for a couple years. Our worst weather months are coming up fast!!!
  12. To take care of me and my better half throughout the year with NO sickness or accidents.
  13. To have a very successful calving season with no losses!!!
  14. For our country to stop all the endless bickering and get something done like they were chosen to do. I DO NOT TOLERATE POLITICS AT ALL!!!
  15. To have a great fruit crop this year! No surprise frosts in May would be a very good thing.
  16. Hope to have a better relationship with my siblings!! The loss of our sister was huge!!!
  17. Hope for a successful maple syrup season, it’s looking better so far.
  18. To make our farm something our ancestors would be proud of.
  19. Hope for our economy to pull out of the mess it’s in without hurting our day to day living!!! We need to learn to take care of ourselves and our families without taking advantage with these increasingly outrageous price hikes in everything.
  20. Hope that our country will become more self reliant and not depend on other countries so much! Why can’t the big spenders use their affluence to bring back the factories to our country, pay our employees instead of other countries, and make it profitable for the company owners as well as our people!!!

That’s my rant for the day and hopes for the year!!! Good luck 2023!

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