We Are Not Grasshoppers

To the untrained eye, a rainy day might seem like the perfect time for your friendly neighbourhood farmer to relax.  This might be true at other times of the year, but at harvest time, rainy days are often the busiest. 

With big harvests come big canning.  Today we worked on "ant-ing" (as opposed to "grasshopper-ing", of course) away for winter.  As always, homesteading around here is a family affair.

We began early this morning by harvesting the majority of the beets and all of the yellow beans that are currently ripe.  We set some aside for tomorrow's CSA baskets and the rest got ready to be preserved for winter.

A bunch of cleaning, cutting and pressuring canning later, we have ten jars of beets, seven jars of beans, seven jars of beet greens (think spinach!), and two jars of pickled beets.  

Not bad for a day's work, though it has been a really long day.  We will so appreciate today's hard work when our pantry is stocked with healthy, homegrown food and our family's food security during our long winter is guaranteed.  Aesop knows best.  Go ants!