“I’ve got my work cut out for me.” — The most common refrain you’ll hear this time of year around these parts.

It’s busy.

Everyday, putting up food. It’s bushel season. Everything is coming in extra large amounts. Apples, pears, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, squash and too much more to even think about. At this point I pick my battles. I’m done picking blackberries, I’ve got pears to deal with. There is some nice lettuce coming up, but there are also fresh beans and we are still working on our 250+ ears of corn. So, focus on the beans and corn let the lettuce wilt. Sorry lettuce. I know I’ll regret that mid winter.

This is the time of year we perform the kitchen magic that turns tomatoes into sauce, cucumbers into pickles, cabbages into sauerkraut, apples into cider and deer into venison.

I’ve put up thirty-some quarts of tomato sauce. I had 18 quarts left from last year (because I put up 64 quarts, sheesh). I’m done putting up tomatoes this year and not sorry at all to see the bottom of the tomato buckets. We froze 17 quarts of corn, and I had to pull the plug when the Boss wanted to keep going. We do not need more frozen corn, we still have some left from last year — the Boss was none to happy to hear this news.

“How did we not eat all that corn?” he asked like it was an egregious sin, that I, as the quartermaster, had committed.

“Geeze, we can only eat so much,” I replied.

Seriously. Our freezer is So.Damn.Full. So much food for two people. And yet, I’m still putting it up like I’m some kind of prepper.

“We’re a bunch food hoarders,” a friend commented when we were discussing our week’s activities, which involved drying, canning, freezing, dicing, slicing and fermenting everything in sight.

I’m making everything in large batches and freezing massive amounts of leftovers — pesto, veggie soup, chili, stuffed peppers, chili rellenos. I should not have to cook at all this winter.

What do we do with all this, you ask? We pack it in coolers and haul it to Montana for the winter. Shit, we shouldn’t have to go to the grocery store for anything but ice cream and Juanita’s corn chips all winter. Though I know I won’t be able to resist having a grocery store only one mile from my house, ahh the trappings of civilization, soon to come our way. . .