Happy birthday to Joe!

So I'm a couple of days late with the online birthday wishes, but that's how it goes these days. (A belated happy birthday to Barack Obama as well!) The birthday peach cobbler turned out good, and I was even able to muster up enough excitement to eat it. Joe's mom had gotten four pints of Hagen Daz ice cream, and since we didn't have a freezer to stick the leftovers in, we had to bite the bullet and finish them all off!

Joe's birthday marks the 2nd anniversary of our official move into the shanty. I came across this picture the other day of those first days in the shanty. It was quite a mess from moving, and still very much a work in progress (that hasn't changed), but it was home!! Can you spot Joe in this picture?


The food preservation blitz continues. After another day of work at the berry farm, we now have 3+ gallons of raspberries and a gallon of blueberries to process. I am currently in the middle of canning green beans given to us by a friend with an abundance. As exciting as it is to put all this food aside, and as much as I love canning, I must confess I'm looking forward to the quiet, relaxed days of winter when I get to enjoy the fruits of all this work. Our next major canning spurts will be applesauce and tomatoes. I'm hoping we get a couple of weeks break before those two crops really start coming in. For one thing, we need time to work out the puzzle of where to stash all these cans! I'm thinking the non-temperature sensitive items on the bathroom shelves will be transferred to secure boxes in the outdoor kitchen to free up valuable space.

Time to make my umpteenth trip to the pressure canner to see if it has FINALLY depressurized! (A lesson in patience I obviously need.)