Back to school

The last few days before school starts, well, it was all a big blur.  Although someone may have taken some, it's easiest to admit...there are no photos that I took.  It was crazy.

We've been picking an older neighbour's apple tree (and tidying up underneath it) and well, it's a lot of apples.  I have an enormous shopping bag of apples left in the fridge, and that is after countless dehydrator apple chip sessions, applesauce, peach-apple jam, a couple of crumbles, and at least an apple a day for everybody.   (We have also donated a lot of apples so others might eat them.)

Then, last weekend, we went out to a U-pick vegetable farm, because I needed to make some pickles.  I thought I needed maybe 12-15 lbs of cucumbers.  I spoke with the farmer, who is also a professor at our Professor's university.  I held Sadie the dog's leash.  And before I knew it, twins and their professor dad had picked:
Over 40 lbs of cucumbers
a dozen ears of corn
a zucchini the size of a cricket bat
one bright orange winter storage squash

I stopped them right then and there.  It's been a lot of putting up since then.  I've canned 23 lbs+ of pickles.  The rest of those cucumbers also got donated.  A family can only eat so many...

While this happened, we prepared for the start of Grade 2!

And, this article ran...(and I missed it entirely, so forgive the delay in mentioning it.)
The benefits from repetition

Soon-- it will be a new year!  If you celebrate it, wishing you a very happy and healthy Jewish new year! It's 5779!  Now it's back to catching up.  Thank goodness for school. :)

Getting their goat...

Here's my newest piece on the CBC:
Getting their goat: Manitoba Hydro could save money, energy with grazing animals

Other good news:
--My friends in Houston, mentioned in the last post, are ok.  Their home didn't flood and they are helping others whose homes have flooded.  I expect everyone in that area of the US will have some hair-raising stories to tell the rest of us.  (Perhaps more people will catch on to climate change now?  That it is a real thing?!)

--We picked some apples locally..but there weren't a lot this year because we had some bad caterpillar problems in the spring that ate many apple trees' blossoms and leaves. Thank you, Aurora Pizzeria, for letting us raid the unpicked apple trees in your patio garden!)

Yesterday, we drove out to Plum Ridge Farm, which is near Teulon, Manitoba.  (about 20 minutes from Gimli)  We came home with a lot of apples, plums, and cucumbers.  To give you an idea of how much?  Well, I've canned 14 pints of pickles (dills and bread & butter) today, about 9 lbs of cukes, but there is still maybe more than 5 lbs left.  We gave away two large bags of apples this morning, some crab apples last night and we still have so many that there is no room in the fridge for it all!  We've made some apple chips and applesauce already.  Chutney, frozen apple slices, and jams will happen too, I hope.

--Putting up food means there is more "fast food" off the shelf when it's cold this winter.  It's easy to make apple crumble, applesauce or pie when the apples are washed, cut up, and ready to go from the freezer.

--It's been hard to do any canning at all with two little boys home, but they will be starting Grade 1 at a new school on Wednesday.  Whew!  Very exciting stuff, but also, I know some guys are sort of nervous, too.  (I get that--I never slept before the first day of school either!)

--In an odd twist, I am not teaching at the Manitoba Fibre Festival this year.  I'd been scheduled to do one workshop, but not enough students signed up.  (too many spinning classes scheduled at once, perhaps?)  Anyhow, it ends up being a relief, because the Professor (aka, the twins' dad) is going to be away that week, so now I can just hang out with my guys.  I love teaching, don't get me wrong, but sometimes things just work out to make things easier, and I cannot complain about that!  Hopefully there will be other times to teach in the future...down the road.

Our air has been a bit smoky from fires burning in Northern Manitoba, and today, we've dodged a few thunderstorms, but we're all remarkably busy and cheerful, considering.  I will miss the warmth of summer but I'm also ready for little boys to be in school again. :)

It's also a little brisk...is it time to make and wear knits again soon?

 Pictured:
The Spire Smock (in Saffron)
Gigadistal (in Variegated blue/periwinkle)
Ploughed Acre Socks 

Putting by

On Saturday, we spent time outside at the wading pool, but hiding in the refrigerator was an enormous bag of cucumbers!  One of the Professor's grad students...has an uncle with a farm.  The farm had a bumper crop of cucumbers..something like a shopping cart of cucumbers every day.  After delivering cucumbers to everyone in the family, this kind grad student brought some to the lab.  How much?  When the Professor took the box home at the end of the day, after others had taken what they wanted, I think there were roughly 9 or more pounds of cukes!

For those who know us, we eat a lot of cucumbers around here...but the household favorite, year round?  Pickles.  So, I had a hot (literally) date Saturday night with the canner and 8 lbs of cucumbers.  Six pints of dill pickles and six pints of sweet cornichons later, I think I'm calling it quits when it comes to canning dilly beans and pickles this year...now it is on to chutney, with perhaps a side venture to salsa if the tomatillo plants produce more.  

Meanwhile, I wrote this article, which came out on the CBC on Saturday as well:

Beating food costs with home-cooked, Canadian-grown foods

Timely, but completely coincidental...

About 10 more days until preschool starts, but who's counting?

September--already?!

I've really enjoyed all your canning and preserving comments so I am going to keep the theme going here.

This week, I made cornichon flavored pickles. Seven pints of them. I didn't have little tiny gherkins so instead I sliced up yellow lemon cucumbers and enormous, size of your arm, killer green cucumbers and pickled those. In fact, I felt sure that if I didn't get those huge cucumbers cut up and into jars they would become the superhuman monster cucumbers that took over Winnipeg and killed us all in the middle of the night. You know, so I made more pickles. (Yes, I am scared of vegetable monsters. I think a zucchini the size of a baseball bat might come out of a closet and kill me sometime, and I don't even like zucchini all that much.)

I felt ahead. I felt calm. Then Thursday came, time to pick up more veggies as part of my farm share, and my friend said--"Oh, my in-laws gave me these apples." Right. Some apples...think two enormous shopping bags' worth. I love apples, so she gave them to me. Today I made 6 pints of spiced apple sauce, and earlier in the week I made pie with some other apples someone gave us and....I feel a little out of control. We still have a full bag and a third of these apples left, and no room in the refrigerator.

In order for this to be a knitting blog, I need to post photos of knitting. Most of the knitting I do is top secret or if not top secret, maybe just boring. However, my desk looks about how I feel right now...this is only part of my desk, too. Every surface sort of looks like this. A little disorganized, but clearly a work in progress. A clutter work in progress, perhaps?

Last night in bed, the Professor and I were talking about all this. I haven't quite calmed down yet from teaching every day, so I guess I'm on warp speed. I mean, today I baked 4 loaves of challah, canned 6 pints of apple sauce, wrote the draft of an article (1000 words), vacuumed some, walked the dogs...it's a little much still. I kept saying, in my conversation with him, how I just needed to, ummm, get things a little calmer. more organized. Like, I want to settle down soon, you know?

"I understand," he said. "Do you think that you'll feel better when everything in the house is organized into little jars on shelves in the basement?"

Funny, huh? The sad part? Yes, I just might. Unfortunately, my first concern was that we might run out of jars. Time for a long weekend, you think?