Racing to Keep Up With Garden!

                The season is quickly becoming a frantic race against time for the home canner and freezer, and that’s the category I joined since we moved to the country.

                If I let the garden go to clean house, the weeds have a field day, and the food rots on the plants.  So I tend to let the house go; now I can’t yell, “Close the door, were you born in a barn?” to the kids because the house looks it.

                I can’t remember the last time I took down cobwebs, and my kitchen cupboards are in a dizzy state.  I barely manage to keep up with dusting and vacuuming and the laundry piles up faster than I the spin dry on the washer.  I must keep pace with some things, like dishes, animals, and bathroom cleaning (also newspaper writing), but the garden comes second.

                It’s wonderful that we got a new freezer this year, but it’s rather unfortunate that Jim hasn’t installed a plug for it in the basement yet.  I’ve frozen 17 quarts of vegetables and fruit now.  With a turkey and a large container of ice cream, not to mention several cans of orange juice and the week’s bread ration, the freezer above the refrigerator is bursting at the seam.  Electrical work is way out of my line, so itr must wait until my live-in handyman can get around to it.

                I can’t complain that Jim was remiss in his household duties as the last few weeks have been hectic.  Besides the ever-ripening variety of produce, we’ve survived a wedding, vacation, moving Grandma from her house to Mom and Dad’s, and a seven day workweek for Jim.

                The other day two of my sisters (I have four) came to help in the garden.  We managed to fill our old trailer full of weeds and cleaned up a great bit of garden.  I pressed all the day’s pickings on them as I couldn’t put them anywhere anyway.  I tried to talk them into tackling the house next, but they declined.

                You’d think that if the freezer were operating, my troubles would be over.  No,’ I’ll always have something to complain about.  The beans.  I hate cleaning beans (but love eating them) more than anything.

                Since food preserving is not in Jim’s line, it’s me that has to cut off the tips and snap millions of the nasty things.  I you rub them the wrong way, it makes your teeth itch.  If you try to start blanching them too soon, you get behind on cleaning them.  It is a necessary evil though, if we want to eat this winter.

                I think I’ll just start some trouble tonight.  When Jim is ready for dinner, I’ll just refuse to serve it until my freezer is plugged in.  Maybe I’d better think of something different though:  he’s bigger than I am and even more stubborn too.  I might never have my freezer.

                Maybe I’ll try one of my infrequent (and not always successful) pleas in exchange for a working freezer?