Like many of you we’ve had a delicious taste of fall like weather over the last few days. The heatwave we’ve been under for almost a month has been broken in a rather dramatic fashion.
We’ve had rain and overcast skies to go with the cooler temperatures. It definitely feels like fall weather but it’s a good month early.
I know the heat will be back before true fall of the year arrives, but the cooler temperatures and low humidity have been so nice. We are forecasted to stay below average for the rest of the week.
I’m always amazed at how fast the garden deteriorates this time of the year. One day all is lush and green and the next you see some brown here and there and the next you see whole patches that have died out seemingly overnight. I know the lower temperatures will hasten that process right along.
We canned about 30 quarts of green beans over the weekend and eight quarts of tomatoes. This week Matt hopes to make some hot green tomato pickles and on my list of want tos is a run of Betty Jean’s cucumber relish and a run of salsa.
Matt’s mind is on deer hunting and firewood. He got permission to get the rest of the giant oak that fell on our corn so that will help feed the woodstove and hopefully he’ll be able to restock the freezers and jars with deer meat too once the season opens.
If you have this taste of fall I hope you’re enjoying it as much as we are. Matt keeps reminding me it won’t be long before the heat returns. I know he’s right but I also know fall of the year will be here for good before we know it.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Happy Birthday Tipper
Happy belated birthday, Tipper! I hope you had a wonderful day with your family! Our weather is fluctuating so much lately (Alberta), today’s forecast is for 78.8 tomorrow is supposed to be 64.5. I guess we take what we get!
Happy birthday to you Tipper! August 5th is a special day ! It’s my Daddy’s birthday and also my youngest sister’s birthday. Daddy went to Heaven a long time ago, he would have been 102 years old today. I’m not going to tell my sister’s age because she might not want me to share that! LOL! I hope you’ve made lots of happy memories today. Love you always.
Happy “cool” Birthday! Hope it is cool in every way.
Happy birthday Tipper! Wishes for the happiest of birthdays and many blessings from your friends in Kansas!❤️
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIPPER! I hope that your day is as wonderful and inspiring as you are! I look forward to hearing about the family cooking for you.
Happy Birthday Tipper.
It feels nice and cool here in Virginia as well. I’m finishing up canning the last of my spaghetti sauce and getting ready to freeze corn. I can’t believe it will be time to decorate for fall in another morning nth already; summer has flown past. But then it always does.
Tipper,
I had a computer failure and lost my entire address book of email addresses. Please, if you still have mine, drop me line so that I can put you back in my address book. I’ll send the same message to Ed Ammons and any others here who have my email address.
Hope you enjoyed a great birthday and that Matt, the girls and the boys made it the best ever for you.
Happy Birthday, Tipper! I hope you are allowed to enjoy your day! You certainly deserve to!
Happy Happy Birthday Dear Tipper !!! You are a treasure !!! May you continue to be blessed with all the heavenly treasures that you enjoy !!!
Happy Birthday!! Hope you have a blessed day and enjoy the fall preview!
Happy Birthday, Tipper! I hope your day is as special as you are. Even though we’ve never met, you feel like a friend. Many blessings to you!
Happy birthday Tipper!
Mine was yesterday-turned 61.
Pouring rain here in the NC piedmont east of Charlotte and cooler!
Joni Shelnutt
Joni-I hope you had a good birthday!
Wishing Tipper a wonderful and Happy Birthday. May God grant you many more years!!! Love your shows!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Tipper!!!! Have a beautiful and blessing filled day. Your cover picture looks so inviting: “Come sit awhile with me and tell me your story.” Which you do so well as you Celebrate Appalachia!
Happy Birthday Tipper . Yes we were blessed with fall-like days last week and even some rain. it sure was a relief from the triple digit heat indexes from the many weeks before. it is beginning to warm up a little bit during the day here again but the mornings are nice and cool so we get out and do the hard yard work early.
I hope you enjoy your day!
You were not kidding when you said July would be busy for y’all with all that canning you are getting done. It all sounds really good. It’s not just a relief from the heat but such a taste of Fall and it has been wonderful. A nice soaking rain right now here around us I hope will revive my garden plants producing. Happy Birthday to you Tipper. Hope this is a great day for you : ) Psalm 118:24!
Hi Tipper, hope you have a wonderful birthday! I was wondering if you have heard of “lime pickles”. I found them years ago at a store in the Smokies. That store has closed and I haven’t been able to find them anywhere else. They tasted very similar to my Mammaw Coleman’s homemade pickles.
This will be the first year in ages that I don’t have anything to can. If the groundhogs and deer hadn’t wiped out my garden, the heat would have. I will have some extra tomatoes from my 24 plants that the critters must not like. There’s an old-timey store about twenty miles away that sells locally grown produce, honey, sorghum, and all kinds of homemade goodies. When I called and asked if he had any green beans, he said no, they are scarce this year, and the last ones I sold brought $105 a bushel. I told him I would stick with Green Giant. My sister found a guy selling green beans at a roadside stand for $3 per pound. I said that is cheap and asked her to get me 4 or 5 pounds. Turns out that a bushel holds around 30+ pounds of green beans, so that was not much less than what the old timer was charging at his store.
Shirl, try the canned Hanover blue lake green beans, they are the hands down favorite store bought beans around here.
We’ve had cooler temps but very little rain. The farmers crops around me sure need rain.
It was 65 this morning in Ellijay. Sure is nice to sit on the porch in the morning with a cup of something hot right now. Fighting off the epizooties this week with fire tonic, propolis extract, plenty of hot tea and local honey, a few other homemade remedies, and good old NyQuil.
I put up 9 pints of canned coleslaw this weekend while I was still feeling good.
I hope you have a >>Happy Birthday<< today Tipper!
Happy Birthday Tipper!
not here in tampa. but then, maybe that’s not something to be wished since it brings the height of hurricane season…
The few days of cooler Fall like weather were a welcome relief here on the Cumberland Plateau. I always look forward to Fall as the change of seasons brings wonderful new days that make me love being outdoors. Like Matt, I hear the deer woods calling me.
Amen, the cooling down sure is welcome. Your words about the garden changes are an illustration of how an outdoor-dependent life way trains us to notice small changes and understand them in the bigger picture. Gardening makes me ever more curious about things standard gardening know-how doesn’t speak to. One example is how wind lodged corn stands itself back up. Does it work the same with all corn? (I doubt it.) And after all this time I have been noticing how the runner beans bloom progressively from the ground up which means later in season they need support up at the tippy top to do their best. Anyway, I meander but it is about the sum of little things. They even translate to life lessons as the good Lord told us in his parables.
No relief for us in central Florida! 93 yesterday. We were building a shed yesterday and we had to take a break about every 20 minutes! Glad you had a cool down.
Happy birthday Tipper! I hope you have a wonderful day.
I too am enjoying this early fall like weather. I read last night that this is the earliest time on record the month of August has started out this cool. After being dry, breaking and setting new heat records since the beginning of June were are now setting a record for the coolest start to August. The weather sure is different from what I once remember. Along with the cooler temperatures, we have been having a steady “soaking in” rain for the last 4 days, I am sure the creeks in some areas that have destroyed their land and woods with subdivisions/housing developments will be flooding. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand asphalt and cement don’t soak up water. I know the hot weather will soon return but I keep telling myself it is only a few more weeks before September and the beginning of fall, my favorite time of the year. Aren’t the first weeks of August suppose to be part of the hot “dog days” of the year?
2 days ago it was about 65° it never did get to 70, yesterday was the same, it has rained most of the night
You have to try making some mustard pickles. Look up Lady Ashburn Mustard Pickles or I can send you the recipe I use. They are so good and take no time to make.
This weather definitely has me wishing for fall, even though I hate to see the garden wind down, the cool rainy weather is a nice change from last week where it was near or at 100 degrees every day. I made a big pot of chili last night to celebrate the cooler weather, what a nice addition my fresh tomatoes chopped fine were instead of using canned!
Susan, I have been thinking of celebrating with an either a pot of salmon or oyster stew. My family did not eat either one during the hot months. A good pot of vegetable soup made with fresh vegetables and cornbread would also be mighty good. Please, please make it unsweetened cornbread, I will eat pound cake if I want sweet!
Randy I could not agree more! No sugar in my cornbread, please and thank you. Vegetable soup in the summer time with fresh tomatoes, okra, corn and potatoes is a feast for sure. My grandmaw canned soup starters with a little bit of everything in them, green beans, peas, tomatoes, onions, corn, okra… whatever there was a handful leftover of when the rest of the jars were filled, sure was good on a cold winters day when I would come in off the school bus!
Susan, I am a pure T country boy, now man that grew up back in the 50 and 60’s. My family along with my grandparents and most of my country neighbors grew and preserved in someway most of our year round food supply. My mother and grandmother made their vegetable soup/soup starter just like your grandmaw. Just as you said, a pot of this soup and a chunk of cornbread was hard to beat for supper on a cold winter evening or night. I have never liked any type of meat in my vegetable soup. Vegetable soup made with canned grocery store items just ain’t the same, there is no comparison with this home canned soup.
We have had relief from the heat here in Arkansas as well. It has been so nice. I’m so proud of all the green beans you put up!! God is so good!!!
We, too, had the fall weather for about 4 days over the weekend. We attend an annual steam engine and tractor show each year. We’ve been doing that for over 20 years. The weather was so beautiful and I’m sure those running the steam engines sure appreciated it too. We parked down by the river in the shade to fix and eat our lunch. It was just so beautiful! It’s getting back up there now and a body can feel each day it’s a bit hotter and more humid. The rain continues. The Lord knows our needs
We use to make cucumber relish, but our great aunt gave us a zucchini sweet relish recipe and we have made it for about 25 years now. I make enough to last 2 years and give as gifts. A lady who was so dear to us would eat it straight from the jar and if the mood hit her could eat the whole pint. She had no family in this world. She was an only child and had no children. She lived the old ways. She didn’t know what a Ziploc baggy was and got so tickled when we showed her how to use it. She was such a joy to just sit and jaw with.
Many blessings to all y’all! I pray Granny is feeling better!
Tipper, it’s like you read my mind on describing how the garden changes so quickly, because I was thinking that yesterday while sitting on my back porch. You just wrote it a whole lot prettier. Matt is right, the heat is coming back next week according to the weather forecast. Until then I’m going to enjoy every minute of this cool weather! I’m not canning this year. The heat made our cucumbers so bitter they are not fit to eat. Our tomatoes have come in slow and well we have enjoyed everyone of them on sandwiches or salads. The green beans I planted at my mother in-law’s request Mountaineer half runners turned out tough. She said it was because of the heat. I myself just don’t like them and wished I had planted me some Blue Lake bush beans since they are my favorite. Live and learn, but next year I’m not planting the half runners. They literally took over the entire bed, but mostly grew leaves and not many beans. My beets are still growing, surprisingly, so I might get enough to can some of them. If not I’ll just enjoy eating them. Y’all enjoy the cool weather and have a blessed day!
The rain has been welcomed here in Harmony,NC as it has been both very hot and dry. The cooler weather is delightful Tipper I have enjoyed watching the hummingbirds flitter around outside my kitchen window this summer. There are usually about 12 or so at one time. Happy birthday to you today! I am also an August baby. Good month don’t you say?
My wife Aug 3rd and her younger sister Aug 1st. They lacked 2 days beginning born a year apart. We always teased and said “ maw and pa were not wasting time”! It was 9 years before the next one (Teresa) and the baby of the family came along. Wanda, August 1st, asked if they could take Teresa back and get their money back.
just curious if Howard’s farm is still in businessm all I have done is pick strawberries there. I think they have other products. I live near lake Norman in Mooresville. it’s about cold compared to the weather last week!
We are having this wonderful taste of fall too. It is 61 here this morning and cloudy. The high of 77 that’s predicted is just perfect after we have been feeling scorched by much higher temps. I am like you Tipper, and love all the seasons, but fall is definitely my favorite. We look forward to putting some deer meat back in our freezer too. I have never canned it, but my mama and dad did and it is delicious that way. Hope everyone has a cooler, wonderful day!