Snipping Beans And Talking To My Cat

Lately all the drama online has made me want to dig a hole and climb into it. Between the shenanigans and idiots at my other blogsite and the politics of the day, I'm fed up and in some ways bored with it. It's gone on long before I drove onto the information superhighway and it will be still go on long after I'm nothing but ashes in a container somewhere. I'm trying not to be judgmental but can someone explain to me how, after 8 years of President Obama, people who love guns still have them despite their insistence that he's coming for their guns? All the facepalms, eye rolls and side eyes in the world won't begin to measure the depths of my disgust at the sheer unadulterated stupidity of that one. But that's none of my business.

I am so over sitting in front of my screen trying to find people of sense that I'm actually doing work like things to occupy myself. I actually have a half bushel of beans all snipped, blanched, packaged and in my freezer. One quarter, so far, of yellow wax beans and one quarter of the Italian Romano or Roma beans that I love. I have a half bushel of regular green beans on order and will be getting another round of the Roma and yellow wax to freeze. This bowl of yellow wax gave me 5 quarts of goodness and today's Roma beans another 5.

Once the middle of October rolls around I will have beans, squash, sweet potatoes, spinach, swiss chard, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, peppers, carrots and any other root veggies that I can find at the farm markets in my freezer. I've already done the strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. I'm going to add peaches, plums, grapes and applesauce. Home made applesauce which given the price of apples is going to break the bank because I want lots of it.

The decision to do this is due to the listeria scare that happened toward the end of the past winter. If I can do all this, why am I wasting time buying food from a factory farm that is susceptible to food borne bacteria? By the time that recall was over, almost every prepackaged frozen vegetable in my freezer had to be disposed of.

I probably could get a better price if I bought by the bushel, the problem with that is my body wouldn't be able to lift it into my vehicle and out of it to be carried into the house, Then I'd have to work harder to get it put up than I do just buying half a bushel at a time.

I like yellow squash and zucchini but that gets watery in the freezer so I'm just using the yellow squash. Will add butternut and acorn squash as the weather cools. I read that if you pierce butternut squash and bake it in the oven, all you have to do is cut it, scoop out the seeds and then it can be frozen. Same with acorn and buttercup squash although those have real hard shells so you cut and scoop before baking. The yield from these was 3 quarts so I need to buy more this weekend.

With everything I'm doing during the day now, I'm not being aggravated by the people who are choosing to be right instead of kind. I'm moving, building strength, sleeping like a baby nights and waking up excited to see what I'll find at the market or the farmstand today.

During the hours I'm working my supervisor lays on the floor just out of the way of my feet to watch what I'm doing and to listen to me talk or sing to the music I'm listening to. When I take a break he climbs into my lap and gives me lots of purrs and cat hairs. So far none of the hairs have made it into the produce. He doesn't seem to care that I don't sing very well. Work seems to fascinate him. He can lie down right beside it and watch. And play with whatever falls on the floor.