The Ant and the Grasshopper Revisited--a Trailer Park Homestead update

Usually on Wednesdays, I share a bunch of photos to show what's going on at my tiny little homestead.  This week, that isn't happening.  My phone that I use to take all my photos doesn't appear to be on speaking terms with my computer, so I wasn't able to upload any pictures today or yesterday or the day before.  Maybe I'll get some pictures of the garden up later in the week after I fix the other reason I'm not showing off my beautiful garden today...

The garden looks like crap.

I've been neglecting it a bit as I can up a storm in the house, plus we've started up the school year and, unlike parents that ship their kids off to be indoctrinated into who-knows-what beliefs and the questionable socialization of picking up all the other kids bad habits in addition to the ones they already have, as a homeschooling family, that means more work for me.  So far this year, the homeschooling has been going pretty well.  The major complaint from my son is that I haven't been giving him enough worksheets!

Back to the canning though, since that's what has been taking the most chunks of time and it yields the more impressive results for now.  Years from now, when the kids are highly successful in whatever it is they want to do with their lives, I'm sure the homeschooling will be more impressive, but for now, check out what all I've been able to put up since my last Trailer Park Homestead update last Wednesday:

15 pints of tomato sauce
9 pints of diced tomatoes
5 quarts of diced tomatoes
3 1/2 pints of blueberry jam
4 pints of dill pickles
2 quarts of dill pickles
2 pints of peach honey
3 quarts of peaches in honey syrup
19 pints of peaches in honey syrup

In addition to the canning, I've also frozen:

3 1/2 bags (measured for my triple chocolate zucchini muffin recipe) of shredded zucchini
1/2 bag of diced green pepper

It is still a far cry from where I'd like to be in terms of getting ready for the winter, but it is still a lot better then I was doing even just a couple weeks ago, so I'm pleased with the progress.  It is still August after all!  I still have a bit more than a month than the likely first frost for these parts (October 3), plus, with my small garden beds rather than a large traditional garden, I should be able to extend the harvest for at least parts of the garden that would otherwise die with that first frost. 

So there's where I stand as of today.  Maybe today I'll get the garden looking pretty and figure out why my phone isn't talking to my computer (Lover's quarrel?  Or something more technical?) and get some pictures up for you.