Prepping is All About Doing It!

Could I have picked a worse time to become ill?  Well, yeah, but it was still rotten timing.  As soon as I felt as though I could stand for awhile, I was out in the garden weeding and burning the germs out of me.  My mother always swore that you never get better until you can get some sun.  So I was out there early, before it became too hot, weeding.  I was able to work about 10 min and then rest 10 but eventually the garden was beautiful again.

This is a first year garden.  For who knows how long, this has been willows and wild roses crowding out everything else.  Now those monsters are gone, the weed seeds have found the sun and have really taken off.  Especially the wild tobacco and mustard but, the soil is beautiful.

Unfortunately, the week I was down, most of the peas became too old for preserving.  I really like young peas and neither of us will eat peas that have turned to mostly starch.  So I pulled out all but the few plants that I'm saving for seed.

I planted my herbs in the worst part of the garden area, lots and lots of stones.  This area has flooded many times over the years as we are alongside a creek.  I would never build a house here but since we are on wheels we are not worried.  We keep a close eye on the creek during runoff season or when there is a lot of rainfall and are prepared to evacuate if needed.  The herbs love where I placed them.  I have never had calendula grow so tall.  And the parsley, it's hard to believe that it is only two plants!

This week I've been busy drying herbs and peaches and canning peaches as well.  We have a great produce guy who comes up every Tuesday from the valley bringing fresh produce.  The first box of peaches I dried (okay, we ate some too) but the second box I canned a dozen pint jars and am drying the rest.  I use pints because we can't eat a whole quart at one sitting and an RV fridge is too small for the rest of the jar and the jars are harder to store because of their size.  A dozen is all I'm doing because of storage space.  Mostly I'm drying.  At times I feel like my great-great-great grandmother coming across the plains.  Heavy bulky items just don't cut it.  Dried fruit and veggies are easier.  I like drying my own because they taste better.  I can be picky about waiting until the fruit is ripe.

Trust me, canning in an RV is not for the faint of heart but well worth the effort.  I hope to purchase a propane camp stove to can on in the future.  I have pears ordered and will can a dozen pints of those as well.  We can use the camp stove for many other things as well and I truly do not want all my eggs (or cooking methods) to be in one basket.  I trip and fall too much!

When it comes to prepping, there are times when I'm too busy doing it to write about it!