Spring

Spring is a busy season in our house this year! I've got a fairly large garden and am planting, watering, weeding, and doing all those fun things. Usually by this time of year I would also be canning strawberry jam, but this year it isn't happening because of a very late frost here in Oklahoma that destroyed the strawberry crop. The few places that have strawberries are selling them for three dollars a pound and that is just insanity! Next year my own strawberries will be growing and I'll be able to get at least a small amount of jam out of them! I have a feeling though that as they ripen we'll just eat them out of hand. My strawberry patch isn't huge, 2 feet by 15 feet.

I have everything in the ground now, except my second planting of beans which will go in today. I'm only growing one crop of snap beans, and four crops of dry beans. I'm really excited about them and hope they all do well! Everybody in our house loves snap beans, and the bee is really loving going out every day and looking at the progress of our tomatoes, of our beans and now that corn is coming up she is thrilled!

I've got 40 tomato plants exclusive for canning this fall. I use canned tomatoes a LOT and in lots of various forms. I'll probably make 20 quarts of maranara sauce and the rest will go to juice, bbq sauce, ketchup, and just plain canned tomatoes. I'm hoping to put up a very large amount of all of those things!

I'm also growing a pretty large winter squash crop, hopefully next year I'll double it. Sugar pumpkins and butternut squash are staples in our home in the winter.

There is something wonderful about moving toward a seasonal life, more nature driven. I can't do laundry on days that it is rainy (which has been a LOT lately) because I hang my clothes outside and they won't dry. I'm paying closer attention to what foods are in season. Honestly who wants to eat a crappy tomato in January, or a hard strawberry in October. They just aren't good.

There is something wonderful about living a life that is more unplugged, pulled away from the life that is focused on the glow of the television, or of the lights in the supermarket. I'm excited for this transition. I think it is better for my kids.