The busiest time of the canning season is winding down

June brought the earliest crop: cabbages, beets, broccoli and green peas. We finish up the onions and spinach and then the berries start coming in. We had a good crop of strawberries this year, and I managed to trade some of my blackberries for raspberries. Then as July slides into August and September, my days are the busiest as we're putting up the main part of the garden: tomatoes in sauces and tomato jam, corn, beans, squash, and peppers. And okra. Yes, I planted okra this spring as usual, and it wasn't until harvest time that I remembered that none of us really like it except for my dear Arthur. So I put the cans up and traded them all away. I won't plant it next year.

So silly to get teary-eyed over a glass half quart of okra.

After the stone fruit (plums and cherries, if I can save the latter from those dratted birds), then it's time to dig for potatoes and sweet potatoes when the cooler weather sets in. Pumpkins round out the season. I also start my cider operation at the end of September. I have to remember to dig my press out of the cellar in the next week so I can sterilise it and make sure it's in working order. It looks as though we will also be having a fine apple crop this year. Then things settle down and I concentrate on harvesting walnuts and deciding what I can trade when our neighbours start butchering their pigs and start making sausage and putting up fletches of bacon.

All the while we're trying to get the emporium up and running, too. My goodness, I'm as busy as can be from sunrise to sunset. I'll certainly be ready to sit by the fire and do nothing but my knitting come November!