Coming Up For Air...

Whew! Finally, a moment to post something--though a bit random. We'll start off with the bottling bohnanza! We (and by we, I mean me and my hubby) have now bottled:
45 quarts of tomatoes
35 quarts of peaches and
123 quarts of grape juice. yeah.

I now feel like I'm rather experienced at preserving food. I feel quite domestic-bound. I now understand the way bottling takes over the entire kitchen (ours, anyway), the sticky floors and cabinets (that Wildman was wonderful enough to clean), the fun of blending the different colors of grapes to get different colors of juice....and the satisfaction of hearing the "pop" when each bottle seals. I'm all out of bottles, or I would be sorely tempted to keep going.

Our Ward Party was a couple weeks ago, and we had a Talent Show. One of the Old Ranchers in the ward had signed up to do some Cowboy Poetry, but he didn't show up. So, Wildman, who was the MC, decided it would be fun to volunteer his WIFE to come up and do some Cowboy Poetry. After much embarrassment and difficulty trying to remember the FIRST line of the poem I had memorized years ago, I finally got it and the Story With A Moral flowed freely. After I finished, I had old/rusty cowboys and ranchers and cowboy/cops/sheriffs come up to me with shiny eyes, spouting off admiration that a woman, a young woman, not only knew of Cowboy Poetry, but had it memorized, and could hold an intelligent conversation about the more prominent poets. HA! For some people, seeing my scars from my horse accident gives me some credibility that I'm a real horse woman. For others, it just takes a poem about a dead cow in a stream to surround me with the glow and romanticism of the old west and add some weight to my equine opinions. Such is life.

Below: Tomatoes and peaches before...

Below: Tomatoes and peaches after....

Below: 3 of the 7 coolers of grapes before...

Below: Grapes, after.

Below: the different colors of grapejuice. Pretty, huh?