No Grasshoppers Here

It has been a long and glorious autumn, but as the days get shorter we are becoming more and more preoccupied with preparing for winter.  I like to think of us as industrious little ants...or even better honey bees.

Alistair and I prepared another round of sugar syrup for our real honey bees today.  They had sucked their feed buckets dry.  With nothing left to eat outside, the ladies were happy to accept another sugar infusion to add to their pantry.

Now that our canning is mostly complete, I also did a quick reorganization of our pantry.  It is looking good.  All like items are grouped together with the oldest jars at the front for easy grab and go!  I am confident that we have enough to make it through the winter.  

We have: stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, pasta sauce, deer stew, vegetable soup, turkey stock, salsa verde, cowboy candy, apple sauce, apple butter, stewed peaches, canned pears, sweet zucchini relish, pickled beans and garlic scapes, pickled beets, pickled daikon, pickled turnips, and one last jar of pheasant stew.  We also have a huge variety of jam and jellies, to which this year we added: sunflower jelly, queen anne's lace jelly, and raspberry jam.

All that I have left to preserve are some sweet onions from the garden that will not keep long term.  I am thinking of making them into onion soup; that is always a popular choice for an easy holiday meal.

One things is for sure, though, there are definitely no lazy grasshoppers here.  With the snow just around the corner, we are busy, busy, busy preparing for winter.