Beans Aplenty
I have thirty-seven pints of beans to show for my efforts yesterday:
Beans are not difficult to can. They are time-consuming, but most of that time is unsupervised. I let them soak for two days, changing the water twice. It takes an hour or so to get the canner ready, boil lids and rings, fill the jars, and load the canner. The canner needs to process for 90 minutes, but that doesn’t include the time required to get it up to pressure, release the pressure, and cool down enough to open. I put the first batch in to process in the morning, went off to sew, and did a second batch in the afternoon. My All-American canner holds 19 pints and I loaded it full both times.
These are some of the beans Cathy gave me over the summer. She got them from someone whose mother had packaged up several hundred pounds of beans in preparation for Y2K, so these beans are at least 20 years old. I noted to the husband that these beans actually seem to be of much higher quality than ones I buy nowadays. I am not sure why that is, other than the general deterioration of everything over the course of my lifetime. I know that many processors use RoundUp as a desiccant on their beans, although if I buy beans, I make sure they are labeled “organic" (for whatever that is worth).
We are well supplied with beans for a couple of months.
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I stopped at Hobby Lobby on Thursday to pick up another piece of Insul-Brite so I could finish my stack of potholders. The man in front of me at the register was buying a sewing machine and paying with AmEx gift cards. I overheard him telling the cashier that all year, whenever he got a little extra cash, he bought a gift card. He said his wife keeps an “eagle eye” on the checking account and buying a sewing machine with gift cards allowed him to surprise her. How sweet is that?
My husband bought me a sewing machine once (a vintage Singer Featherweight). We all know how that ended, LOL.
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Attic insulation happened yesterday morning in the new shop.
One of my blog readers asked, in a private e-mail, why the husband wanted a ceiling-mounted heater if heat rises? I asked him, because I was curious, too, and he said those heaters have blowers on them that blow the hot air down. A floor-mounted heater would take up valuable real estate. I’ve seen those ceiling-mounted heaters in lots of shops around here, so they must be effective.
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Our house sits on a corner—not a sharp corner, but a corner nonetheless, and one where a forest service trail and road veer off into the wilderness. Things happen on our corner. There are the usual kegger parties up at the trailhead on summer nights; I can tell when the party is over when I hear cars come tearing down the access road. Sometimes a sheriff’s deputy sits there and waits for them. On Valentine’s Day a few years ago, the husband and others from our fire department responded to a suicide about a mile up the forest service road. People routinely misjudge the road conditions in front of our house and get their cars stuck in snowbanks. One night, an impaired driver hit a tree in our front yard. His truck spun around and he was ejected and later died.
A few nights ago, I was sitting in the living room waiting for the news to come on when I heard a gunshot out near the road. Gunshots out here don’t freak me out as much as they might someone living in town—people hunt in the surrounding forests and hearing gunshots is not that uncommon. I put my coat on and started out the door to find the husband. Just then, my phone beeped. It was the neighbor across the road who said that someone had hit a deer but not killed it. They must have finished it off before driving away. The husband located the deer and dragged it across the road to the woods on our side.
Thursday night (also while waiting for the news to come on), I heard someone’s car sliding up the road. (I’ve gotten accustomed to listening for odd noises, apparently.) I put my coat on and went out onto the porch to take a look. Sure enough, someone had pulled their car over up at the corner and was walking around looking at it. Either they slid off the road and hit something or they hit a deer. By the time I informed the husband and he started up there to see if the person needed help, they had driven off.
Yes, I’m careful. I don’t go out to investigate these things when I am here by myself.