This time of year is always a time of great joy and complete stress.  I often find myself up to my elbows in a canning project, trying to tell kids to settle down and boiling something over on the stove all at the same time.  Then I realize I forgot to get dinner ready.  Ever been there?

But about an hour or so later when things have settled down, food is nicely in jars, children are eating a delicious previously prepared freezer meal (man I love having those on hand) and I am happily looking at a clean kitchen, I realize that I am always so proud of the canning I do each year.

It is an extremely stressful time, but it is a joyful time.  I know that as each jar fills up I am saving food and money for my family.  I’m reminded that all of the pain of weeding and planting has an amazing ending to enjoy.  That gives me renewed strength to start again the next day.

This week in one day I really put too much on my plate.  At the end of the day I had eight quarts of spaghetti sauce, eleven freezer apple pies and fourteen cups of shredded zucchini ready to be frozen for bread in the future. And I had even gone grocery shopping that morning, something I am only doing every six weeks now. Not a day to be disappointed in.

I want to showcase something that many on blogs do NOT do.  At the height of this canning and freezing excursion I am showing you a picture of my domain of chaos.  Simple steady home?  Yup, it is there you just have to look deep under everything.  Preserving your own foods is no easy task so why should it look clean and perfect. 

Clean and perfect exists in my jars, not so much the counters as I am more focused on the food.  Clean up comes later. 

My point is very simple.  I know there are other homesteaders out there who feel just like I do about this joyful, overwhelming time of the year.  Just hang in there everyone.  You will be thrilled when you look at your full canning shelves in two months and are able to say “I did that”.

Happy homesteading.