Beets, Carrots, Corn, Morning Coffee and The Day of the Triffids!!

Today has been very productive. I was up early with Dave and saw him off to work, I then left the house to drive to Grabill to meet another blogger at the Grabill Country Store for coffee. I pulled into the parking lot and there was only one other car parked, Rebecca got out of her car and walked towards mine and voila we had met in person.  We spent an enjoyable hour chatting about our lives, our children, our grandchildren, and our faith, I am sure we will get together again.  You can meet Rebecca in blog land by visiting her blog, she  maintains seven blogs!!, http://lifeandgodliness-rebecca.blogspot.com/ .  Funnily enough I found Rebecca's blog because she commented on Embers blog, http://kindredofthequietway.blogspot.com/ one day a few weeks ago, Ember lives in Hastings, England, and because of her blog I have now met someone who lives perhaps five miles away from me in NE Indiana!  Isn't that cool?!?!?!?

After coffee I returned home to can beets, carrots, prepare corn for freezing, and I had two loads of wash to hang out.  I hung the wash on the line, and then headed to the garden to pull up beets and carrots. I hauled the bounty back to the picnic table and sitting in the early morning shade of the locust tree I cut the tops and bottoms off of the beets and carrots and then hauled all of the waste to the chicken run, the girls were very excited to have goodies to scrounge around in.  Next stop the garden hose to spray down the veggies and remove as much dirt as possible and then off to the kitchen. My Dad loaned me a CD version of The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, I had listened to the first two disks and they were very good so I was anxious to listen to the rest of the story, and really enjoyed the story as I worked my day away in the kitchen. (Another book I really like by John Wyndham is Chocky). I put the beets on to boil and started to peel and slice carrots.  The carrots were soon in jars and ready for the pressure canner. While the carrots processed I drained the cooked beets and peeled them in readiness for canning. We like pickled beets, so I prepared a mixture of vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, mustard seed, whole cloves and whole allspice, the beets were were brought to boil in the liquid and then put in jars to be hot water canned.  I ended up with 8 pints of carrots and 14 pints of pickled beets.
After a tidy up of the kitchen I headed outside to pick the rest of the corn in the first patch, the second patch will be ready in a week or so. Once the corn was picked and shucked I brought it into the kitchen to process.  Freezing corn is easy, blanch, cool, cut off the corn, bag up and freeze.
Our tomatoes are starting to ripen and I know that I will canning many jars of them in the next few weeks, our green beans are running late, but hopefully I will have some to can soon.
Here are some pictures from this morning.

Beets tipped and topped.

My Handy Dandy "Cart", I use this old stroller to haul all kinds of things around!

Just the carrots were left to pick in this garden

Close up of a Zinnia

More Zinnia

Yummy, carrots, I wish I could put the aroma of them on  my blog, they smell so wonderfully good!

A deformed carrot, the size of  my fist, I left it outside.

The deformed carrot top was starting to flower, I had never seen a carrot flower before, it reminds me a little of Queen Anne's Lace.

A pile of beets and carrots ready for a quick hose off!

The girls eyeing their bounty!

A wonderful day to hang clothes out.

All clean and ready to go to the kitchen.

8 pints of carrots.

Corn getting a quick wash before blanching.

14 cans of pickled beets to add to the carrots.

Corn all ready for bagging and then off to the freezer.