The Weather and a Water Bath

Life in Tennessee is rather unusual sometimes. Just this morning I was coming up to the house from picking the garden wondering how in the world it could be so dry and yet so humid! I don't understand it! We haven't had even ½ an inch of rain total in something like eight weeks! The pastures look awful everywhere around here, and the garden isn't thriving. The squash and cucumbers are drying up, even with the extra watering I'm giving them every couple of days. The tomato plants are even wilting from the bottom up, and we've not even canned any yet!!! Thankfully, the peppers don't seem to be doing too bad. The corn and the butter beans are having the same problem: the fruit is not filling out. The corn already has tassles turning, but the ears aren't even as thick as two of my fingers in some cases! The butter beans are being rather heavily attacked by the bugs; I'm hoping we'll be able to get a fairly good crop before they loose all their leaves! Okay, enough complaining! On to something else.

Well, we canned some bread and butter pickles yesterday. The cucumbers aren't doing bad enough to quit bearing, that's for sure. For all the pictures my sister takes, somehow she managed to forget to get a good finished product picture! The pickles sealed by a water bath, like the cherries, but they are also hot when you put them into the jars.

We discover everytime we can that we love our fryers! We again had two going, and they really make the whole process much faster and more enjoyable. I'm sure we'll be using them again when we can the tomatoes later this week. The tomatoes also use the water bath method too, if I remember correctly.