Summer is Coming to an End!

Not that I am crying big tears or anything, since all I have gotten done since coming home from Colt's graduation is taking care of garden stuff. Dehydrated at least 200 lbs. of tomatoes, froze almost 100 lbs., made sauce with at least another 100 lbs and gave away 100 lbs, (bartering for freezer space with Jacquelyn.)

Dehydrated or canned or froze around 5 bushels of sweet peppers. Made jar after jar of pickles, sweet relish, tomatoes, peppers, etc. Dug 120 lbs of potatoes and have frozen about 40 lbs so far. Made freezer coleslaw with the cabbage, stuffed cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers out the yaa-hoo, freezer cucumber salad, refrigerator pickles, freezer pickles, frozen spinach, green beans, corn and dehydrated radishes, lettuce. Have so many bags of sweet peppers had to put most in Jacquelyn's freezer. I popped and blanched and froze a 1/2 bushel of green beans today and still have a half bushel of peppers to figure out what I want to do with.

If we have a disaster we will never starve as the dehydrated stuff can be good for as much as 30 years. We have so much can't even find a place to put it all.

tonight we had stuffed peppers that was a combination hamburger, sausage, homemade pasta sauce, sweet peppers, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Just picked green bean cooked like Del Monte seasoned green beans with garlic, peppers and onions and homegrown twice baked potatoes, all really delish.

Me and My Two lb Drum Fish!

A Really Sad Day!

The saddest thing happened today on our fishing trip. I was having the most fun when all of a sudden a really big fish caught the hook and as I was reeling it in my reel shot craps!

My rod and reel was given to me by my Dad about 40 years ago for my birthday and it was one of my most treasured possessions.

It was a replacement for a rod and reel I had lost in Southern MO. Fishing at the crack of dawn, when just in the wink of an eye a fish took my bait and "whoosh" my pole slid into the abyss of a MO lake. I cried and my Dad bought me this rod and reel to replace it on my next birthday. A Johnson Citation 100B reel on a fabulous rod. I never had anything that fantastic to fish with before or since.

That reel could cast out farther than anything I ever had before. It was a beautiful piece of fishing equipment.

My Dad once said to me that he was so surprised that I wanted to sit by and talk to him rather than my new hubby when we all went fishing together, when Daddy and I first got married. I didn't tell him this, but I knew I would have so many more years to sit with your Dad than my Dad that I chose him and I was right.

We decided we would be fishing buddies as soon as he retired. We would go together all the time. But I started having babies and he got sick and we only got to go a couple of times, but they were the best times of my life.

I guess the gears on my reel just finally gave out. I don't know why but I thought it would be around for the rest of my life to pass on to the grandchild who loved fishing the most. (So far there is no-one who is passing that bar).

Anyway with some research and emails, I found out it cannot be repaired but can be purchased on Ebay. If I replace the internals and keep the original case it should still be the one my Dad gave me, just repaired.

So I feel a little better tonight.