Veggie Field Trip

Yesterday brought a detour to our plans for this week. After having some testing done last week and seeing a specialist. I was scheduled for an invasive procedure to check out a suspicious lump in my throat. I spent the day yesterday at a local hospital having the procedure done. I am glad to report it went fairly smooth and now we simply have to wait for the results. Sleeping most of the day away, I left Lon with everything to take care of, which he did very well. Thank you for being such a great Mom and Nurse to me. Not wanting to be by myself today, he agreed to stay out of work to take care of the place and offer me comfort.

Awoke this morning feeling washed out and a little weak from the meds they gave me for the procedure. But after a hearty breakfast we decided to call around and see if we could find some vegetables for our winter stash. Only one lead was found, that required a trip over to a nearby town. Off we went in search for the hidden treasures along country roadsides. Stopping only long enough to check out a newly opened fruit stand in a small town on the way. Talking with it's owner blessed us with an opportunity for him to pick us up some peas, 3 bushels of "Zipper Peas" on his next pick-up this afternoon. The produce market we were heading to had already been heavily shopped all week.Leaving little in the way of produce we were looking for. It is a very promising store though for any of our future needs and is only 30 minutes from our front door. But another unknown blessing was in the making, for this owner also allowed us to order 2 bushels of "Contender" green beans from him to be picked up this next week on Wednesday, simply on our word. Then giving us his cell number and telling us he would order for us whatever we needed. YEA!

(Zipper Peas, aka ~ Crowder Peas)

Traveling further down the road through several other counties we stopped at a previously shopped market from last year. Here we were able to purchase 1 bushel of green beans and 1 bushel of corn. All of a sudden we went from not having any produce to a lot that would need to be processed. Heading towards home we stopped at a"you name it we have it" store to check for some more canning jars. My supply at the house was low and for sure not enough with what we had committed to buying. A surprise find was the plastic jar lids for the 1/2 gallon wide mouth canning jars I had ordered and planned to pick up on the way home. After trying other options I had decided that the 1/2 gallon would work perfectly for storing our goat milk in the fridge. So an online order was placed about a week ago and I had them shipped near Lon's firehouse for pickup. Of course while in the neighborhood we had to stop and eat lunch at a local B-B-Que restaurant that is never short on customers. Rounding out our trip was a stop back at the market where we had ordered the bushels of peas. The spare room now smells like a produce stand and jars are stacked in the kitchen waiting to be filled.

Now for the real work to begin,

Deborah