Pickles, ducks and cameras

This is Daisy the mama duck. Her babies had just hatched out in this photo. They are now quite big! I will have to take another photo soon. Daisy turned out to be the best mother duck we have. She is so protective, keeps a close watch on her babies and she has adopted all the other babies that have hatched since. She is the one who gets them all back in the barn at night and safely in bed. This is her first batch of babies and she wins mother duck of the year award!

This is all I have of last years tomato sauce. I am praying for a good tomato harvest this year to fill the pantry shelves with more and diced tomatoes too.

This photo shows from the top my 3 measly jars of tuna that are left, the second row is canned green beans, and the next row is cherries from this year.

This is a shot of my pickles on the top shelf. Some are dill, some are bread and butter and some are a recipe I made up myself that I call sweet and spicy. : )

I can now upload pictures again! No, I didn't find my disc, but I did go to HP's website and find the driver for my camera and re installed it to my computer! I am soooo happy about that! : )

We have had rain the past two days. It has been a relief not to feel like I have to be out in the garden doing something, or picking or canning. Of course once things get dried back out I will be right back at it. I am so thankful for the abundance of produce we have. It will feed my family healthy foods all winter. Saves so much on the grocery bill too.

I have gotten 30 some jars of pickles put up this year so far. Twenty 6 quarts of green beans, I forget how many qts of cherries that are canned. Soon I will be adding frozen beet greens, chard and summer squash to the freezer. Plus canned and pickled beets, tomatoes, tomato sauce. We have been picking wild blackberries and have several gallons of them in the freezer now. Potatoes and onions, turnips will be put into the pantry. Cabbages will be hung in the shop and made into kraut. We will have some good winter squash too and a few pumpkins. Then the orchard will start kicking out the produce. Apples, plums and pears to be canned, juiced and made into jams and jellies. Hopefully we will get a few ears of corn for eating. The crows had most of the crop before it could grow! Next year I am putting row cover over them until the plants are big enough that they won't be pulled out of the ground. Lesson learned this year!

And then when the harvest is in, we will be doing home school and I will have the time to sew again! This year I will be teaching my girls some sewing skills.

Have a wonderful weekend, and may the Lord bless you.