August Update

Wow, what a whirlwind the last few weeks have been!

Our freezer is stuffed!

Besides the 3 bags of bought veggies on the top shelf, it's all corn. 50 pints and 2 quarts.

Second shelf is summer squash, string beans and Swiss chard.

The third shelf is stuff that wouldn't fit on the second shelf, along with home made broths, spaghetti sauce, soup and the ice cream.

The bottom shelf is about 20 quarts of blueberries from our 5 bushes (about 16 quarts have been given away this year), plus 1 quart of peaches, in case we need to make a pie. The rest of the peaches have been canned. The door is blueberries and veggies for my sister to take with her each time she comes to visit.

I even have a little space on the third shelf! Woo!

These shelves aren't complete yet. I still have tomatoes and applesauce to can. I'll be finished with them by mid October.

First shelf is pickles - 2 kinds of sweet, and jam.

Second shelf is allllll peaches.

Third shelf is a mix of peaches (that didn't fit on the second shelf), B&B pickles, and kosher dill pickles.

Fourth shelf will be allll tomatoes.

Bottom shelf - apple sauce most likely.

Or, I'll rearrange. We'll see. The shelf unit is 4' wide x12"deep x5'high. We also have shelves in our laundry room that will hold a few jars of each as a pantry.

I've also made a lot more jam than what's on these shelves. By making it and selling it very cheaply to friends, I was able to completely pay for the bushel of peaches I bought. Hopefully I'll be able to continue this each year to pay for small things.

Now, if we had to survive on what I'm putting up this fall, we'd live about 3 months. We have another refrigerator freezer full of meat, and the fridge is filling with dried beans, flour, rice, barley, corn meal, etc. It might as well live in there and keep the fridge from running as much, as live on a shelf taking up space for no reason.

I know we wouldn't live very long, but I'm not that much of a pessimist about life. At least not yet. I may get to the point of truly homesteading and preserve all of my own food. But for now, this is what I can handle. A very full freezer, a filling fridge, a filling shelf unit and a full pantry.

I do have to say, living like this certainly isn't the worst life has to offer, and is something I'm truly enjoying. Definitely there are worse ways to live than to stay physically busy growing and preserving your own food, cutting your own heat, and making do with what you have. I've always preferred a simpler way of life, and so this isn't a difficult adjustment for me to make from having worked full time to being disabled with constant vertigo.