A Fishin' and a Cannin'

About a week or so ago, J, my Pops, and I drove down to the Kenai for some dipnetting/camping. After about 16 hours driving time (which included an early am car accident, a two hour delay at Turnagain Pass, and about a 45 min wait at Walmart Customer Service...ahhh!!) we ended up getting a grand total of 44 fish! Last year was our first time canning salmon, and we only ended up getting 27 fish. So we were pretty excited that we doubled our fish count. This year we decided to can all of it, instead of freezing some. We are planning on smoking the frozen filets that we didn't use from last year. Anyway, after about 3+days of canning, we totaled out at about 132 pint jars and around three cases of quart size jars. That roughly equals out to about 2-3 jars a week for the rest of the year!! Woohoo! J and I are really wanting to limit our meat supply to things that we can hunt or fish. Commercial/industry meat is so absolutely abhorrent, and I want to steer clear of it as much as possible... Do your RESEARCH and you will understand what I mean! This month has gone by so incredibly fast with a wedding, bachelorette party (not in that order), friends coming and going, CCC meetings, a barbeque, and finally getting a taste of garden harvests. Kale, chard, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, arugula, basil, dill, parsley, sage, catnip, thyme, bok choy, broccoli are abundant and I love it! I set out some herbs to dry and I couldn't help but do a little happy dance inside myself because I can't wait to begin to harvesting and putting up process. I will try to get some pictures up soon. The potatoes are doing well... J and I mulched over half of them, and will finish up the rest soon. They are just beginning to flower, which means that they are starting to produce potatoes. It will be so exciting to finally be able to dig those up! The bees have faked us out twice now by "pretending" to swarm. For those of you who don't know what swarming is, I will explain... When a hive starts getting to large for the space they are in, they will create another queen, split the population and one half will fly to another location with one of the queens. Now it is absolutely essential to have another hive ready way in advance, so that you can "catch" or keep the swarming hive, or you will miss out on a lot more honey. It was pretty crazy the first day they swarmed, because they flew up into a tree directly above the hive...they formed this gigantic mass of bees and it was NUTS! (I will post a picture later) Anyway, they ended up flying right back into the hive. And a few weeks later, they did it again. I cannot wait to harvest the honey next month! I think we will be getting a good harvest this year. A neighbor brought over a small jar of her honey and I can't even begin to describe how utterly delightful it was. Store bought honey isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the real raw stuff. By the way, did you know that honey is the most adulterated food product out there? Most of it is basically honey-flavored sugar water. We all decided that the honey will be reserved for toast, biscuits, and other things that you can actually taste the honey on. It will not be used for any sort of cooking/baking, I was also told that I am not allowed to use it in my tea :(, since I am probably one of the greatest honey consumers, with the amount of tea I drink. It depends on the season and my mood, but I think I have maxed out at around ten cups a day... maybe that's not a lot, but it seems like a lot to me! Anyway, I have also been spending my days decorating my sweet little home. I will post pictures soon! It is not technically finished, but it's good enough for me, and it is kind of nice to have an ongoing project. I cannot wait for the coming winter months filled with days cozying up in my rocking chair near the woodstove with a good book or a knitting project, a cup of tea, and a candle going...oooo it just makes me happy thinking about it! I am thankful for the summer days, and it makes me happy to think about all the pretty mason jars that will sit on my pantry shelf filled with the beautiful harvest from the garden, the river, and the land. Alrighty, well that's all for now... here are the pictures from our fishing trip and canning!

Love the process! Hannah