Cucumbers Galore!

This is only about 1/3 of the cucumbers I picked this morning.  I've been in the kitchen ever since.

 

This was a totally unexpected day.  I had no idea how busy the bees have been, underneath those cucumber leaves.  I am so glad I peeked today.  Although they were larger than I'd like for pickles, I made them anyway.  We cut one up and tasted it.  Delicious!

I prepared 8 quarts of refrigerator pickles, and still had more cucumbers.

While I sent the girls to town for celery seed, I canned grape jelly. 

When the girls returned, I canned my first sweet pickle relish - 6 pints.


And I still have more cucumbers.........


It's 7:47pm and I am done for the day.  Now I need to go take my laundry off the line.  My three older kids are gone for the night (one went camping for several days), and my husband is gone.  That leaves my 12 and 9 year old to help.  Guess they are doing the folding for me.  It's 89° in my kitchen and I am ready to stop.  Tomorrow may very well bring on another canning day.

Modge Podge of Events

Well.  What's a farmgirl to do when she is stressed to the gills?

 And.............

 My favorite way to de-stress (and yes those are really my very own gloves)  I had a plan to box in a fight one time before I turned 40, but with moving twice, it never happened.

Besides, this farmgirl needs to get back in shape.  I seem to have lost it over and over and need to find it again ( ha ha ha). Once we get back into a routine, we get right back out of it, due to "life."  All it takes, is hearing my kids make fun of my flabby arms and thighs.  And I'm back out working the speed bag until my arms feel like falling off.  Then again, every day "stress" sends me there anyway.

Yesterday I took some of the kids to have a picnic and play-date in a park about 1/2 hour from home.  I sat under a picnic shelter, crocheting with a cool breeze coming through.  However, I should have been playing on the equipment with them.  After we get home, I see a video they took while playing on the "fort."  It was a large fort, so it's hard to see everything.  You know those play phones on play equipment?  The ones where one person talks at one end, where you can't see them, and another listens somewhere else?  Well, my very well behaved and innocent children did something.  One talked and one listened.  The one listening, was telling a girl to come over and listen too.

The girl leans down and my talking daughter spouts out, "This is Jesus!" and on an on they went.  

I guess next time, I will be playing along with them.  

When we got home they were bored again already.  So, two of them went out back and built this:

For information on what Farmerette and a Young Cultivator is, click on MaryJane's Farm.

It's still standing this morning, and the barn cats love it too.  Last night we were admiring it, and laughed when we saw that the barn cats were playing with lightening bugs.  It was so cute to watch them.

Today, I must get more jelly made.  I look out and see these

.......and think, I just can't let that go to waste. Even though mother nature brings it back every year, I look at them different now.  Just like dandelions.  I laugh when I over hear town people complaining about lawn care, and killing dandelions.  I am blessed not to have to worry about that, with living in the country.  I can choose to let them grow, and use them.  And have the freedom to not use chemicals on my lawn.  Life can't get better than that.

As for the quilt road trip, I am still waiting for more information, and e-mails back from the historical society.