Homestead Harvest and Maintenance

The harvest continues.  The tomatoes have been coming in like crazy and we have put up 31 quarts of spaghetti sauce and 15 quarts of tomatoes with green chilies.  We are picking green beans as they come along (slim pickings as the rabbits helped themselves first to the plants) and canning them along with the spaghetti sauce.

We have also dehydrated Tulsi Basil, Goji berries and passion fruit vine leaves for tea.  In addition we dehydrated our Asian pears for snacking, have harvested okra several times (mostly enjoyed them by eating them fresh), and the tomatoes keep coming.  At this point we are canning until we run out of lids on the spaghetti sauce.  There are no lids to be found and the lids I ordered in June from Lehmans are still on back order.  Once we run out of these, we will start drying our tomatoes as I am sure not going to encourage these people who run out and buy things up to try to sell them at an exhorbitant price once they are gone.  No matter that we are living in times when people are hurting.

My husband  is a teacher and recently needed to attend and volunteer at a recent high school graduation for his school (I am sure people know that teachers do not get paid in the summer, right?)  At any rate, masks were required and will be required for the upcoming school year, so we went to the thrift store to find some fabric to make masks for my husband and the school administrators.  For $2, I found some fabric in his school color for the outside and some light colored for the inside, we also bought the pony tail holders and thread, and then used some leftover paint to make some masks with school spirit, after washing the fabric and hanging it in the sun to dry to make sure it was germ free.

The fabric was purchased at my favorite thrift store, Live to Give Ministries.  When we opened the bag with the fabric there was a card in it that said, "Jesus Loves You," which prompted this funny story:  I was working hard on canning spaghetti sauce. My husband helps me with the processing the jars part, as the kettle with 7 quarts in it is rather heavy. While he is not helping me, he is usually running around cleaning up or something. My husband finds this card that says "Jesus Loves you". He said, "Can I toss this piece of paper? I already know that Jesus loves you." "You do?" I said with a smile. He said , "Yes, he gave you me." lol, this is the way we roll. A few minutes later the solar power went down. He diagnosed the problem and figured out the storm had loosened one leg of the power that came in. He told me he was going to bring down the power, which he did, and fixed the whole issue in what seemed like ten minutes. He turned it back on and I noticed the internet modem went on which meant it was fully restored. As he came in the door to check his work I said, "It's all on, even the modem works. You were right. Jesus loves me." Then he smiled and kissed me. Life is good.