Preserving summer

I see lots of blueberry goodness in our future. Rebecca's researching what— how to can this. Got this from the neighbors. Probably 15 pounds of blueberries.

La la la, let me be free.

So, boat status?

It broke.

It fell off the side. Oh yeah? Does it float? Yeah, it floats. Barely. Let's go see Josiah's progress. From yesterday on our access road. Before we go up there, I gotta get something for Mom. By the way, painters are here. They missed 4 days last week, so basically we missed 1 week. It's like— gotta fix the root cellar. What? Did you know we found the hole? That's what that mess is about. Gotta make a mess to clean it up. We're waiting on Randolph. He's out of commission. He'll know how to seal feel that. What happened to Randall? He had some sort of minor surgery. Uh, what are we getting? Paint? These are paint jars, right? I don't know how many she needs. Come here. That's a lot of blueberries. Come on, bitch. Incidentally, cleaning up the shop— this is probably an awful angle, but cleaning up the shop for real, like pegboards coming and stuff. You want to help me out with the angle? Oh, thank you. That's much better. Did you get a strap, Papa? Yeah. You could carry it a lot easier. Like put it on my back?

Yeah, like a little strap.

There's little handles right there. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Hey, speaking of the devil, Randall, let's help you. How many cases you think you need? Um, I brought you 4 cases. Oh boy, it's like 15 pounds of blueberries. Are you making blueberry preserves?

No, it's like a blueberry syrup.

All right, can you make some blueberry preserves or is that too difficult? Um, I need to look that It's no worries. What I mean by blueberry preserves— I don't know if I'm using the right term— it would be no added sugars.

So this one is— this one has— this is preserves and it has maple syrup.

It's tricky because most of the family would like a little sweetener in the— I mean, maple syrup is great sweetener in the blueberries. I'm more low carb. Animal-based. I do do fruit and blueberries, all their antioxidants. Unsweetened, don't have a whole lot of carbs. Would be good to add to a plain yogurt, give it a little bit of flavor. Be a real treat for me. Jonah, I guess he took his boat down. I thought we were going to do that together and then go look at Josiah and then work on that shop. Let's go look at, uh, Josiah's job. Where are you going, Henry? Let's go look at Josiah's job. Wow, wow, it's a little steeper than once it's cleared, then when you're walking it, you have to keep the water off of it. I think it mellows out up there. What happened? It's me to carry him. He said there's a bear here. Yeah, don't tell him there's a bear here. But they make it 200 feet, probably. It's a little rough, but they'll smooth that out with the, uh, track loader. Get to the top of the mountain. Good hiking road. Mountain bike trail, horse trail. He's gotten to one of the hard parts. Here's some big trees that have grown up in the road. Yeah, look at that. Yep, 2 more trees like that. This is really neat. What he said. It's neat because this is places we've never really been able to be, particularly with machines. Like, we're gaining more farm. Here you go. Why did he? Yes. And now you're a driver. Really, I'm trying to think of ways to capture this for you guys. I have an idea. How about I get on my phone? It has a natural balancer on it, and I go to the bottom and run up with my phone. Austin will probably put that on fast-mo, but we can do that every time until we finally get to the top. Sound fun? Oh, your favorite person, your favorite job. He hates cleaning the shop, as do I, but we got to get at it. What you building? We're trying to build a little boat, but major improvements? Not yet. First things first, let's put all shelf. And do you think we even need this countertop? Yes! So we get all shelves in the stalls. I see pegboards on this wall, this wall, there. Problem number 1: these— we have these shelves, and that's all good stuff, right? Like, that's scraps for their little projects. That's fine. But we have all these stalls we could possibly put them in. Problem number 2: we've got tools like this. I'm looking at though, how would you store this? Ah. You hook it in one of those. Everything, everything needs to have a place. Then there's all this like nook and cranny stuff, you know, like a bike repair pressure measurer. We have to find places for all of this. We also need to think of a way to hang all these power tools. We're going to have an empty shelf like this. Maybe we just put them on this shelf. Yes, I know. I would say this is zone 1 workshop. This stuff you don't visit a lot, you don't use a lot. This is the permaculture concepts in here. That needs to be stored further away. And the stuff you use more regularly goes here in the shop. How often do you use a, a truck? 2, 3 times a year? Yeah, it needs to be stored further away. All right, we got that empty. It's ready to move. Henry got in the minerals. It's almost time for lunch. We'll stop for that. You like, Rico? You've been dressing up Dressed up as a clown with a white face. Nice hoodie. You're probably gonna get hot though now. We're in that tricky time where it cools off in the morning, but still hot during the day. That's when we lose lots of sweaters, isn't it, Gideon? Yeah. All right, let's take that sweater off and put it in the house.

Hey!

Hey! Stems.

Stems and mushy ones.

Couldn't get the kids to not include the stems in their competition.

I said last night—

their rush to harvest.

Be careful, don't get the stems!

They were in a race.

They were playing games, which is fine. I got a lot of blueberries out of it, so I can stand here and do this.

Wash in the jar, then you're gonna boil them? Is this gonna be enough?

Um, well, I'm only gonna do one round.

Okay.

Because I might do something different with those blueberries.

A few moments later. Cooking it down?

Yep.

Till when?

Till I want it— till That's the thickness I want it.

Okay, and then what's this? You just—

and then those are the warming up the cans, jars. Yeah, look how much more I still have left.

Nice! How cool is this?

It's so amazing.

First time?

I feel addicted.

Hey, we'll have to give them a can for giving us all these blueberries.

I'm doing—

I'm on it. I wonder if you missed y'all taste testing it.

Oh, oh, you missed it.

You want to do it again for the show, Annie? If I can. It was—

it's so good. You missed mine because I, I did this.

Annie keeps saying this tastes Summer. Yeah, I keep saying I can't wait to open these in January and taste summer. And taste summer.

This is what I did, and I just went like this.

It's so good, y'all. It definitely works better with a camera. Much, much, much later. Look what you scored! This is farm harvest, y'all. This is, this is August. Tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, green beans, eggs. You got your work cut out now tomorrow, Beck. Yeah, blueberries today, veggies tomorrow. Although we're gonna go harvest more blueberries tomorrow. What you saw in there times 5, probably. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pints of blueberries. I think I was a little ambitious.

I know, I was like, what'd you think when I brought so many in? I was like, we don't need that.

You use one?

No, I only use one.

Not even half.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

I didn't know, I didn't know. All right, let's go pick blueberries tomorrow again. We can freeze some too, you know.

I know, I know we can, but this is so good. Yeah, you didn't taste it.

It's so good. Blueberry cobbler is also good, and that takes— that can be from frozen.

Yeah.

Oh, we don't have really a place to do that right now, do we?

That's why I haven't done it. That's why I canned them, because where are we gonna freeze them? It's just not easy. When we're set up and we're at home next year.

2 weeks. We'll be in there in 2 weeks. Painters are aiming for the end of the week. He said that a week ago. He said he hoped, so I didn't really buy that. He said that a week ago. Well, if the stars were to align, it would happen. Just hope the alignment of the stars happen. I think we have a record for community soccer tonight. Okay, we're shaping up. We're shaping up nicely. Some new girls, some old boys, Sam and John. Okay, it's actually looking pretty even. All right. Y'all ready? There we go. That's a soccer coach. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. John, John's everywhere, save the day. Go kick, let's go. Let's got to have order or this is going to get crazy. Go kick right there to Chris. Oh, oh, they robbed me. I don't know if anybody's going to score. Oh, oh, are you on my team? Yes, I am. Let's go! Here we go, let's go again. Uh-oh, uh-oh, oh! All right, they got us 2 to 1. Good job, everybody!