Summers End

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” ~ H.L. Hunt

Woke up this morning and it was 38.3 degrees. The last days of summer are going quickly or maybe I am hastening them along thinking the work will end if summer does. Foolish me!

Monday we worked all day on those garden huckleberries....and at the end of the day we only had 10 pints of pie filling. I woke up Tuesday morning and just couldn't fathom doing a whole days work for 10 pints of a non meal product. It was not a priority. So the balance of the berries ended up in the wheel barrow going to the pigs. We used or pawned off what we could of the pears, the pigs got the rest. The leftover crabapples from my brothers tree, well past their prime...to the pigs. Wanting to give them some roughage with their fruit, I pulled everything out of my garden by the greenhouse. The only thing left in there is turnips, parsnips, ground cherries, peppers and some sunflowers. All the cherry, grape and pear tomatoes went to work with the man to share with his fellow workers.

The decision was made to send the pigs and steers on their trip. It was scheduled for the 27th as I had feed for both to last until then. Today the steers got out. The man had to come home from work to help get them back in. Then the kids came home from school and the steers were in the neighbors yard. The kids and I were able to get them in. As we are walking up the driveway patting ourselves on our backs for having managed without the man, we started to smell something really bad...it was our dinner burning on the stove. The telephone will be busy today to move their trip forward to this weekend. It is either that or we will need to build a really big spit.

I realize everyone has their breaking point and I seem to have reached mine. With so many irons in the fire, one is eventually going to get burnt, I just wish it hadn't been my dinner. The overload is my own fault really. I over-estimate our stamina and under-estimate the quantity of the product and time needed to process.
So the plan for this weekend is to get some more irons out of the fire. We have to go to a friends to get apples for cider, sauce, butter and pie filling. That leaves the potatoes to dig and store, the large garden to clean up, horseradish to make after a frost, the freezers to clean and the sheep to shear.

So soon the list, along with the days, will be shorter. The bright side being my shelves and freezers will be full. It is then when I have time that I will be happy about all the work. It is then I will be happy with my decisions.