An update on the copperheads: it would appear that after guarding our blueberry bushes from the marauding chipmunks, and obviously having eaten all the chipmunks in our backyard, they have decided to move on to a new home. We've not seen them all week. I'm a relieved but a little sad. They did do a darn good job with keeping the chipmunk population down.
Dh picked some more Asian pears this week. This is what happens when you leave them alone for a while instead of trying to pick them early: they grow bigger! Duh. The one on the left was picked a couple of weeks ago, while the one on the right had a chance to catch a few more rays of sun on the tree.
Yesterday was canning day. The pile o' tomatoes in front of dh was just 1/3 of what we ended up processing. We got a total of 18 3/4 quarts of sauce! The 3/4 quart we didn't can, but will use for borani or something this coming week. Never leave more than a small head-space in your canning jar.
All the tomatoes in 4 big pots:
Did I mention that they were in FOUR big pots?
We watched a bit of Mad City Chickens last night. We'd first seen it written up in a paper in Vancouver, and requested that our library get a copy of it. Being the generally agreeable library it is, our wish was granted. It's a cute little film, a bit silly and humorous. What struck me as sad though, was, at the beginning of the film, someone in Madison, WI, who had been raising chickens illegally, said that one of her neighbors complained to the city about her chickens...not because of the noise or the smell, but because this neighbor was afraid this woman might eat the chickens. I'm boggled as to where this neighbor thinks the supermarket chickens come from? Rained down from the sky in a pristine shrink-wrapped form?? It's disturbing how some people are so removed from their food (and ancestral roots of merely a couple of generations ago) that they think it's unnatural to raise and process one's own meat. We finished up the kids' swim lessons this week. It was good to find out that they didn't forget everything that they learned last year. :)
Our homeschool co-ops and classes will start up next week and the week after. I guess fall is officially here, despite it not being September yet.
Has school/homeschool started for your kids yet? What sorts of fun things are you doing as August comes to an end?
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams
