Snapshots: Canning/Football Season

Never having been a football fan, I didn't realize that the two seasons coincide. But they sure do.

When I got home from Taos, I found many tomatoes and green beans needing to be harvested and stuffed into jars. So I did that.

With some help from Little Pinkie, of course.

I had planned on canning three quarts of dilly beans, but since I had the giant pot of water boiling already to can the beans, I decided to stick a couple of jars of tomatoes in there, too.

I didn't even peel the tomatoes. The Ball Blue Book does not approve.

A few days later, there were more tomatoes, more green beans, and WOAH CUCUMBERS.

The giant ones were hiding on the other side of the fence behind the calabaza leaves. And that little curly green bean there was all curled around its own stem, like a snake. (There were more green beans, but I sent a bunch to Miss Amelia via the children.) 

Because those were the Armenian cucumbers, they were not at all bitter, despite their size. The skins weren't even tough.

I made them into refrigerator dill pickles, this time with Calvin as my helper.

He proved to have a great talent for jamming those jars absolutely full.

While I was dealing with the giant cucumbers, A. and Jack were helping our neighbor with her garden. That included picking grapes for her. She sent them home with many pounds of grapes. 

I knew the kids would never be able to eat that many grapes, so I suggested A. try making them into wine. They're green Thompson seedless grapes, which are definitely not a wine grape, but A. is always up for an experiment.

All of the children took turns smashing the grapes to release their juices.

And now the top of my woodstove looks like this.

Grapes for eating, grapes fermenting, tomatoes awaiting roasting, and meat defrosting.

The volunteer carrots continue to appear and grow to surprisingly large sizes. These two I pulled from the back garden under the roof's dripline.

Teaspoon for scale.

I didn't can those, though.

And last, football.

Cubby had his first game of the year on Friday, at a school about two hours away. We all went. They lost, but they learned a lot.

I took all of three photos, but one of them is actually an action shot.

The farthest kid in the white who looks as if he's about to hit the ground is Cubby. He's trying to get the ball on a kickoff here. He got knocked to the ground by one of the opposing players, but still managed to crawl to the ball and grab it. And I missed the whole play, because I was taking pictures.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.