Shorter days

As the days grow short,

some faces grow long.

But not mine.

Every autumn,

when the wind turns cold

and darkness comes early,

I am suddenly happy.

It's time to start making soup again.

~Leslie Newman

I made Chili for dinner last night. But #1 Daughter wants us to can some soup for her. I have to get moving on that because after the soup and the sauerkraut we will jar next weekend, we will be done canning for the year.

When Saturday dawned at 27 degrees and Sunday came in at 25, (it is 23 now...we are on a downward trend) I decided that was enough and I could harvest the horseradish. I made 8 1/2 pints of Audrey's Horseradish Sauce on Sunday.

For shits and giggles and because #1 daughter bought me an awesome little scale, I decided to keep track of what we canned this year and it is as follows...

Horseradish sauce 8 ½ pints
BBQ Sauce 4 (½ pints)
Elderberry Jelly 11 pints
Rhubarb Relish 8 ½ pints
Blackberry Jam 8 ¼ pint
Strawberry/Rhubarb Jam 9 pints
Strawberry Jam 3 ½ pints
Currant Jelly 7 pints
Black Raspberry Jam 8 pints
Blackberry picked over 100 pounds of berries
made Topping/Pie Filling 43 pints
Brandy 2 quarts
Froze 12 pounds

Zucchini froze 38 pounds, cubed, sliced and grated

B&B Pickles 30 pints 4 quarts

Green Beans froze 11 pounds

Salsa 34 ½ pints

Tomato Soup 22 pints

Apple Currant Jelly 11 pints
Apple Blackberry Jelly 16 pints
Chili sauce 7 pints
Onion Relish 5 ½ pints
Pickled Hot peppers 11 ½ quarts
Tomatoes 22 ½ quarts
Hot pepper butter 17 (1/2 pints)

AppleSauce w/redhots 10 ½ quarts
Apple Butter 25 ½ pints
Apple Pie Filling 35 quarts

Along with this there is dehydrated apples, frozen gallon jugs and canned apple cider, blackberry juice, frozen broccoli, berries, peppers, celery which I didn't measure, 2 steer, 2 pigs, 1 lamb, 30 chickens and 2 turkeys. Now I am waiting on the can-can sales for things like corn which we never seem to grow enough of to can and peas. The potatoes are in the well house, the nuts, squash and pumpkins in the root cellar. The cupboard empties quickly at Christmas time when we make up baskets to give to friends and neighbors but it looks really good right now.

I have hung some of the sunflowers up on the fence and put out a suet cake and the wrens and tufted titmouse are daily visitors. The deer is under the apple tree nightly eating the peels from what I dehydrated that day. And if the dogs reaction is any guess the bear was here Saturday night and last night. We left the door open to let him go do his business...both nights he came running in, hid under the bed and started barking! Brave dog! My brother saw one mama and cub not far from here which he said had a very brown muzzle. Since most of the leaves are off the tree's maybe I will get to see her while looking up into the woods.

I started washing the sheeps fleece and can't wait until it is all clean. I want to spin some of the black. The two black fleece are different and Toupee's neck is turning gray (I am not upset by this!!!!) This is a crappy picture but the camera's batteries died so it was this or nothing. On the left is Toupee and Sable on the right. Sable's is a tighter crimp shorter fleece where as Toupee's is longer and more open. And yes even though they don't look it in this pic they are black. In other fiber news...I am still knitting the lace shawl from HMG. I am on row 102...only 58 more to go. I need to finish this so I can move on. The soup might have to be put on hold until this is done!