Welcome Fall!

[irish]

Fall is my favorite season for all of my life. Remember walking home from school and kicking the dry leaves with your shoes as you walked along.

I live in the country and the corn fields next to the house and across the road and down the road are picked and it was so pretty watching them work during the nice weather. All the colors of the trees behind the fields and the colors of the machinery and the sound of the machinery in the cool fall air. I just love it.

I also have something that I enjoy that is such a blessing to me. I can watch the moon rise through my front room window and watch it move to the south across the sky and then pick it up in the kitchen out the window over the sink and as it goes to the west and north. It is so much fun watching the waning and waxing of the harvest moon.

When the moon is full in the fall when the corn is still in the fields during twilight it is great to stand in my front yard and watch that moon. It feels like I could reach out and touch it sometimes. I have gotten a couple of good pictures of the moon like this on my cheap camera. I have the problem of a light pole being smack in the middle of the picture but you take the picture when you have the time.

I look back at all the canning I did---learned it from my MIL. I tried canning baby potatoes once. Once I said and that was it. Do you know how long it takes to wash and peel enough potatoes to fill 7 quarts??? I have a big pressure canner and it was great for these types of chores.

I also froze egg plant. I would wash it , cut it up, dredge it in egg and flour and fry it in the skillet with salt and pepper. Then let it drain on paper towels and freeze separately on a cookie sheet. When they are frozen I would bag them up. Thennn, when the kids were in school I would take out the amount I wanted and heat them up in the oven and eat all of them by myself. Yum! Yum!

I also made sauerkraut once to see if I could do it. Man, that is the best sauerkraut a person could eat. When we butchered a couple of pigs years back I decided to render lard just for the heck of it. That made the best pie crust you ever tasted. We had a wood stove in the basement and I set the big pots on top of the stove and cooked it down.

It really is fun to do these things. I loved doing the motherly cost cutting things and I surely do miss doing them now. Will some of the rest of you share some of the canning, freezing items that you did. There are always people who know how to do things I never heard of. Irish

[eyeamdry]

Irish, I loved your stories.  I come from a Mich farming background, but hated it because I had to work in the fields as we were a family of 3 girls and 1 boy. I would have rather been an only child (at that time) taking ballet or piano lessons. We did all the canning etc but I would stay as far away as I could and still do.

My hubby loves to continue his families work being from a big farm family.  He is always buying bussels of something and then canning it.  I tell him we can buy it just as cheap. He likes doing the process though.  My daughter, a family of one, does canning such as 2 quarts of green beans, 4 pints of potatoes. etc.  I waste my breath by telling her she is wasting her time--her remark to me is "mother, mind your business, I enjoy doing this."  So some people just do enjoy the old-fashioned ways!  Especially some who never had to do them.  Lucy

[Narablueeyes]

I lived in the country for many years.  Had a garden; raised chickens and rabbits; used to hang laundry out on the line; made bread every week.  Kids would come home after school and raid the garden for afternoon snacks.  One would eat the baby okra, one tomatoes and onions (yeah, I know!), the other baby potatoes.  Canning was such a hassle but made me feel productive.  I miss those days...

[Cheryl]

The leaves are turning here, but the peak time in SE TN is around Halloween.  I, too, love the fall.

Bucky, I confess I haven't "put up" much food this year.   In late summer, I did make several gallons of vegetable beef soup to have for the winter.   I freeze it in quart size bags now that there are only 2 of us living here.  It's great to have on a cold night with grilled cheese or cornbread.

This week I planted a bed of pansies and colorful kale around my mailbox.   I have never planted kale before;  how does it hold up in cold weather?