preserving

This summer got off to a slow start.

It was cool and cold all spring. Many crops that did not get off to a good start. My tomatoe plants have provided enough, but now they are bearing heavily, and we are only weeks away from first frost.

The seed corn company my neighbor works for planted a 5 acre patch of corn just to give away. They furnish corn for the county fair corn roast, for the rodeo and so on. It is a service they gladly do for the community.

But the corn is ready now, and those events were last month.

So this week Terry and I picked a couple sacks of those big beautiful ears. I could have had a dozen sacks if I wanted them. We have a smallish freezer (14 c.f.) and it is full right up to the door. Were it an upright, stuff would be falling out! Somehow I want to live with what we have, I don’t want a 2nd one and a new bigger one is out of the question.

Sadly the field will be disked in and the corn will go unharvested.

So this week I did 21 pints of corn, good corn that mostly will make corn chowder this winter.

I know it is not a big deal, people have been doing this for generations. But I have not. Miriam always all of this and did it well. Now it is my turn and I feel like a new bride. She can tell me that I am not doing it right, but she cannot do it.

So I set up my corn processing center under the big elm tree in our back yard. Didn’t take too long, and those packages of corn look so good.

We are going to be gone next week, and the tomatoes are coming on strong. I told Juan my neighbor across the street to help himself. We have one more peach tree with a bumper crop. It may ripen while we are gone and I told my other neighbor Terry (the corn man and my back neighbor) to help himself if they ripened. “I can just taste peaches and ice cream” he said.

We have been blessed, the freezer is full. Grape juice is next, and last!