I've got a giant stockpot of pulpy plum juice boiling on the stove, 3 small buckets of cleaned chokecherries, and a different elderly neighbour asked for help picking his apples (and gave us most of them) so I have a couple crates of apples. (I also have many bags of frozen raspberries, but probably won't get to those today). It's absolutely pouring rain, so it's a good canning day. (Would be nice if I also have some time for writing, too. We'll see.)
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We went straight from no-more-grass dry weather to oh-no-too-much-rain. Our small farm will do fine (note that we have the privilege of not being dependent on farm income - it's a side gig).
But we're also extremely diversified: we've got SO many different plants growing, and different animals. Some of them will do well in most weird weather combinations. The large conventional monoculture farms depend on consistent weather. No chemical additives will help if there's no water.
Canning marathon complete! (For now)
Plum jam, plum-applesauce, and chokecherry jam all canned and sitting on the table cooling.
And it has now rained enough that the house is leaking in all sorts of new places I've never seen it leak before. Lots more rain still coming. Delightful.
My kid just pointed out that the leftovers from making chokecherry jam really looks like a bowl of bear poo sitting on the kitchen counter. Yum!
@sundogplanets what are the temps there today
Eeeee, I was all happy imagining the plinks of canning kids cooking and sealing and now it’s worrisome plinks of leaks into a bucket
@sundogplanets
DHMO would. 😜
@sundogplanets oh crap, that’s a hard hit at the end of an already horrible year for grain.
@sundogplanets Neighbour’s farm is investing in some equipment to dry out their grain. It’s been pretty wet this weekend over here, a bit further up north, and supposed to be getting a lot more rain today. 🫤
It's pouring so much that the goats yelled their heads off the entire 30 feet or so they had to walk from the milking barn to the daytime barn, and the babies wouldn't even come out to nurse. They stayed under cover in the barn and yelled until the mamas came to them.
I feel sorry for the farmers who didn't get their grain harvests in before all this rain. The guy across the road from us only harvested half his quarter section of wheat. We've gotten over an inch of rain in the last 24hrs.