in my kitchen, around the farm
root cellar, canning experiments, and tangible work
I hesitate to write “my fatigue grows” as an introduction to this week’s essay, but oops, look at that, there it is. Sneaky, huh?
This week has been another of preserving and all of the regular farming duties, but what’s different are the nights. We are actually getting cool nights again and it feels like a great weight has been lifted. The frogs have returned to their nighttime serenade and our windows usher in relief instead of oppressive, muggy heat. A great sigh of relief from all.
We received another huge fruit order last week that saw me wearing a groove in my kitchen floor this week - stove to counter to sink to stove to counter to sink. It’s amazing how exhausting it is to spend all day working but hardly moving. Somehow, you end up with an energy deficit even though you used so little. Everything stiff and sore from contraction. Muscles and mitochondria begging to be stretched and used.
This was the week that I finally got to the maple sap that I had cooked down only slightly in the spring with the idea that come summer fruit canning, I would use it over my regular honey syrup. I promised I’d report back so here I am doing just that. It’s hard to give you a full report until we actually eat the peaches, but I will share what I did anyway. By the way, you don’t need a maple bush to make maple syrup and