The Moving Target To-Do List

I did not get apple pie filling made yesterday. I pulled out my Putting Food By book to look at the recipe and remembered that I didn’t have apple juice. I hadn’t bought any in town Friday morning because I hadn’t expected to pick apples that afternoon. I probably should get into the habit of buying it at the start of the season to have on hand.

[I do have ClearJel, however. LOL.]

I looked at the to-do list while I tried to decide what to do next. At any given point in time, I have about a hundred things on that list; not having something to tackle next is not a problem. What is a problem, however, is coordinating my to-do list with the husband’s to-do list. I knew he wanted to work on the shop siding yesterday. He had also said we could go to town for date night and pick up a refrigerator if I found one. Having deferred the apple pie filling project, I thought I might go to Sears—ours is a “Hometown Dealer” and only carries appliances and tools—but if they had a fridge in stock, we’d have to get it before they closed at 6:00 p.m. I didn’t think he wanted to stop working that early, and he definitely didn’t want to drive around Kalispell with a fridge in the back of the truck while we got dinner somewhere.

After some discussion with him, I decided to go to town. We would reassess the rest of the schedule depending on what I found. Now that tourist season is over, a trip to town on the weekend isn’t so awful. I went to the Sears store and discovered they had an 18 cu. ft. Kenmore fridge on sale that would be delivered to the store by the end of next week. The husband will pick it up next weekend. Done.

I stopped at the grocery store and got half a dozen bottles of apple juice and a few other things on the list. Done.

I checked in at Joann Fabrics, where I used a 50% off coupon to buy part of the fabric for making the insulated window shades. I am using 108” wide fabric, and rather than wrestle with a huge chunk of it, I am buying it in two pieces to make it easier to handle. I’ll pick up the other half of it next time I am in town. Done.

By the time I got home, though, it was almost lunchtime and too late for me to start making apple pie filling. I need to start those projects early in the morning or I lose steam halfway through. I looked at the to-do list again. Sometimes things need to be done in a specific order. Date night had to be rescheduled, so I needed something for dinner. The six peaches I picked from our tree were perfectly ripe. I had taken out a jar of peaches and a pie crust the night before (I use frozen box crusts—don’t judge), so I blanched the peaches, removed the skins, and cut them up and added them to the canned peaches and made a pie. In order to get to the freezer to pull out something for dinner, I had to sort through the tomatoes that were ripening on top of the freezer, wash the ripe ones, and bag them up. Before I could put them in the freezer where I am keeping them until I get enough to haul them over to the pork freezer in the rental house garage, I had to clean out that freezer and move the raspberries and corn downstairs to the fruit and vegetable freezer in the basement. While I was in that freezer, I found a rack of spare ribs that needed to be eaten (don’t ask me why they were in there), so I put those in the oven to cook all afternoon.

[If you give a moose a muffin…]

The husband came in to eat lunch, so I cut open the one ripe (so far) Minnesota Midget cantaloupe and split it with him, then I headed out to the garden to pick tomatoes. I brought in another 25 pounds to ripen on top of the freezer. I made a salad to go with the ribs and cleaned up the kitchen. The tomatoes I had set aside for seed saving were ripe, so I cut those open, squeezed out the seeds into some water to ferment for a few days, and labeled the jars.

I looked at the to-do list again and thought I might work on re-covering the ice cream parlor chairs, so I went and got my toolbox out of the old garage. After I took the seats off and removed the old fabric and foam, though, I decided that the chairs really need to be scrubbed and re-painted. The husband does not have that color green in his arsenal of spray paint, and I wasn’t going to go back to town to get the color I needed, so that project is on hold for a few days.

At that point, the only thing left to do was to make myself a whiskey sour and go sit on the porch for a bit. The husband, having had only one item on his to-do list yesterday, was able to get half the siding on the back side of the new shop. He’ll finish that today.

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I separated that little lame pullet from the rest of the flock yesterday morning. We put her in the section of the coop where we keep chicks until they are big enough to integrate with the rest of the flock. I now have a bunch of sexually mature juvenile roosters and they saw her as an easy target because she couldn’t get away quickly. They were harassing her constantly and she spent most of her time hiding in a corner. Now she can still see the rest of the chickens—and the juvenile roosters can see her, which is driving them nuts but I don’t care because they are shredding my last nerve—but she’s safe in there. Once the excess roosters are dealt with, I’ll put her back in with the rest of the flock. She can hold her own with the other hens.

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The bean pods are drying nicely in the greenhouse. I popped some open to see what was inside.

They are, from left to right, Jacob’s Cattle Beans, Vermont Cranberry and Kebarika (they look very similar, although one is burgundy and one is more purple) and Great Northern.