Apple Pies for the Husband

I am so much more productive now that it’s not oppressively hot. A strong cold front is supposed to come through today and tomorrow will be even cooler. I am ready for sweater weather.

I ran errands yesterday morning, stopped by a friend’s house for a short meeting, then came home and made apple pie filling. I did two batches, for a total of 14 quarts:

I still have plenty of apples. I will do at least another 14 quarts and I really ought to do twice that much. Forty-two quarts of apple pie filling is not an unreasonable amount to have on hand. I’ll see how much I can get done tomorrow and Thursday.

I also made a pass through the tomato patch yesterday and brought in the ripe and almost-ripe ones. Five bags of ripe ones went into the freezer to be dealt with later, and that was after I told one of our employees to go through and take what he wanted so he and his mom could make salsa. I put two bags of tomatillos into the freezer, too.

Pole beans are about ready to harvest. The dry beans have started to dry out. I opened a pod the other day to see how they were coming along (sorry it’s blurry):

I think these are Jacob’s Cattle beans (?) but I will have to check the tag. Beans are so magical. One bean seed grows into a plant that produces 50-100 more beans.

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I have a serger class this morning. Only one student signed up, but I am teaching the class anyway. We have had trouble filling classes at that store this year and I don’t want to cancel a class unless no one signs up.

I am resigning myself to the fact that I may not get that log cabin quilt finished before the craft co-op sale. That was bad schedule management on my part. I need to remember that pretty much nothing but food preservation happens in August and September. I can’t do it all and I am not going to beat myself up about it. We have to eat. I do need to work on class samples for some upcoming classes, though.

The part for the BMW came yesterday—our UPS driver is a young guy with a family. He also has a big garden. He has to drive past my garden to deliver packages to the neighbors, so sometimes he asks questions about what I’m growing. Yesterday, he wanted to chat about grapes. He planted some in the spring. Mine didn’t produce anything this year because they were so slow to leaf out.

I was doing laundry yesterday when the washer started making a weird noise. The husband took the front off of it after dinner and listened to it. He sprayed some silicone lubricant on something and that seemed to help. It’s a Speed Queen heavy duty washer and I love it, but even a heavy duty washer is going to balk, eventually, at having to wash the husband’s concrete-encrusted clothing. I am glad I am married to someone handy. He’s glad he’s married to someone who puts up 42 quarts of apple pie filling. It all works out.