Fruits of My Labours

Not that my labours are in any way done yet ... but so far while on vacation we have dried 10 pounds of plums, a bunch of bananas (although these still need to be dipped in a honey/water mixture, possibly with cinnamon added, and re-dried), some apples, and about 7-8 pounds of nectarines which just went into the dehydrator earlier today.

We still have a few nectarines left, and 10 pounds of peaches, and most of our 20 pounds of apples (when we cored, peeled and sliced them, we only ended up using 4-5 at the time, so the box essentially hasn't been touched).

Hopefully all these dried fruits turn out.  I did also dry some peppers from my garden earlier in the summer, which are now in storage.  Once I get the current fruit dried, I will look into perhaps drying some more veggies, and some more fruit ... maybe doing up some fruit leather.  We also want to do up some jerky.

After we have a chance to try some of these items, it will be nice to know whether or not my efforts to squirrel away food without it having to go through the same type of processing as commercially available food are successful.

Summer Winding Down

The summer months seem to have flown past and are winding down now, with the last four mornings being very foggy (still foggy out there now and it's past noon).  Days and nights are getting cooler, school is back in session, and my pepper and tomato plants have come to an end of their productivity.

Unfortunately, it took so long for the gleaners to respond to the voicemail messages I left over the past couple of weeks that they wouldn't pick our plums.  They said too many had fallen and although there are still a bunch left on the tree, they are too high for them to reach so the yield wouldn't be worth their while.  Too bad I can either climb a ladder (very shakily and with my heart in my mouth) or I can pick plums, I can't do both ... so no plums to process this year for storage unless I can find someone else who is able to climb and pick for us.

Angel was stung by a wasp on Wednesday, her little face swelled up on Thursday afternoon and then her throat Thursday night.  She started having hives pop up over her body and was horribly itchy, even when she was trying to sleep she was squirming and thrashing around, so I wound up having a completely sleepless night that night, what with her tossing and turning and me making sure that her throat didn't swell up so much to stop her from breathing.  A few days of Benadryl and she seems to be completely hive-free and the swelling is gone ... thank goodness!

Today is the first day of my two week summer vacation, so while I have some house work type chores I need to complete, while I wait for laundry to finish washing, so I can then do a load of dishes, I am going to kick back and relax with a hot iced tea.