Rainy Days Make the Best Blues

Our garden on a rainy morning

It's been a really rainy week. Actually, there have been fewer sunny days than rainy since the beginning of summer. There's been no shortage of rainy day activities though..especially this week. 

We've started our summer reading and are immersed in A Tale of Two Cities. For now, I've given up on cleaning the chicken coops and run. Too much mud. Weeding the garden? Nah.

Instead, we decided to take on a few indoor projects. First, there was the refrigerator, a GE, another dinosaur that we inherited when we moved into our house. There's gray duct tape holding one of the door baskets together. I'm not kidding. Well, for the past several months, ice cold water has pooled and frozen into large sheets beneath the deli drawer which  makes it nearly impossible to pull the drawer out, rendering it useless. Every week, I've had to pull out the drawer and chip away, resulting in several large bowls of ice and water.

After looking up our model and watching a video or two, we were pretty sure we could tackle it. A flat head and Philips screwdriver were the only real tools needed. No better time than on a rainy day to clean out the refrigerator. Emptying it wasn't fun. Counter tops and even the dining room table were overflowing. I hoped that all of the work that had gone into picking, preserving produce from last year's garden wouldn't go to waste and have to be discarded. 

After unplugging the unit, disassembling the back panel and using a hair dryer, small funnel and boiled water, we finally cleared the clog, and could hear amidst the rain drops pounding against the windows, the gentle stream of water flowing through our refrigerator. Success!

I won't bore you with the list of other indoor projects which included freezer and pantry inventory, processing lavender, dehydrating herbs, to name a few. We did have one day when the sun came out just long enough to allow us to visit a neighboring farm to pick blueberries. Thanks to a lot of rain, the blues were extra plump and juicy. We canned several quarts in light syrup, froze some for pancakes throughout the colder months, and filled our dehydrators, Lucy and Ethel. Yes, our dehydrators have names. When you spend enough time with such things, sometimes, they get names. We'll talk dehydrating another week.

It looks like rain is in the forecast for at least 5 of the next seven days this coming week. Yippee! More indoor projects. The garden and those new fruit trees will definitely benefit. As I gaze out at the chickens in the run, it appears that they are walking two by two into their coops. Hope you have a great week with a bit of sunshine in between the raindrops.

Blueberries ready for the water bath