I am done canning, or not

I am done canning, at least for a little while. The tomatoes are finally done, the jellies and jams are done and the pickles are done. I am taking a break because there are some other things I need to do, like get my hair cut, have lunch with a good friend, work at the church and just kick back for a bit. I can’t do it for long though because I still have venison sausage to make, beef broth to cook and can, jerky to make, venison roasts to corn and roast for slicing. 

But there isn’t a time stamp on these things. Yes, they need to be done, but if they don’t get done tomorrow, they aren’t going to spoil like ripe tomatoes. That gives me a little break and not as much pressure. 

Doing the plumbing last week made me reminisce about a time when I was a kid and plumbing was forefront in our minds. After years of pumping water by hand with an old-fashioned hand pump, we finally got enough ahead to get a jet pump installed in the well. It was so awesome to be able to just string hoses to the barns and not have to pump buckets full and pack them to the barn. Then it got even better: we got pipe laid across the driveway to the barn and it eliminated the hose from the house to the barn. We had a frost-free hydrant right next to the barn. It was like a fairytale, up until the second winter. We didn’t get a lot of snow that year, but it got really, really cold, like -45º for like two weeks. Even though the pipe to the barn was buried over 6-feet deep, it froze. Back to the hoses from the house, but with a twist. They had to be drained and coiled in such a way that we could lay them down on the porch floor, grab the end and run for the barn while someone turned the water on. If we tried to stretch the hoses out first they would be froze before we could get water through them. 

I am still OCD about how a hose is coiled and laid out. It frustrates me to have them tangle because they are overlapped incorrectly, even though I haven’t had to worry about them freezing like that for about 60 years. Oh, and those hoses were stored in the bathtub, so they had to be hefted out on bath night. 

Which reminds me, there’s one other thing I almost forgot I have to do this fall: I have two roosters that need to take a trip to a hot tub.

Dairy Free Hot Cocoa Mix

2 cups powdered coconut milk

2 ¼ cups powdered sugar

1 1/3 unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup brown sugar

½ teaspoon fine salt

1 cup dairy free chocolate chips. 

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix until evenly combined. Store in a covered container or put in gift jars. To make cocoa, place ¼-1/3 cup cocoa mix in a mug along with ¾-1 cup of hot milk of your choice (you can use water, but it won’t be quite as creamy). Garnish with the toppings of your choice: marshmallows, crushed peppermint or, my favorite, add a splash of peppermint schnapps.