August Gardens: come inside and sit a spell.

[popmom]

@Faith-manor I am so happy to hear about all your yummy tomatoes! 
 

Sounds like you more than deserve to take a break and let that burn heal! Ouch! I know that feeling. Bizarrely intense is correct. 

[cjzimmer1]

40 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

.

I still have some romas left and peaches. Mark wants me to make more of the peach salsa. It has turned out to be very popular with our sons as well as him. But, while canning today, I burned two fingers on my left hand. Steam burns. Bad steam burns. I can't even bend those fingers, and the pain is bizarrely intense. This is really going to slow me down, and at the moment, I am feeling a strong aversion to heat.

I'm so sorry! Those things are awful to deal with.  Do you happen to have any lavender essential oil available?  I generally think of essential oils as nice things to smells (despite all the people who think they do everything including curing cancer), however I do really think that lavender oil helps with burns.  

 

 

[cjzimmer1]

My tomatoes and peppers are flooding in now but unfortunately I've lacked the time and energy to keep up.  But for my third weekend in a row, I've loaded up the dehydrator with tomato slices (probably about 1/2 bushel or so fits) and made spaghetti sauce in the digital pressure canner.  The last two weekends it was a double batch (10 pounds of tomatoes which worked out to about 4 jars of sauce) but this weekend it's a 4x batch (so 20 pounds).  I'm going to have to do another double batch tomorrow and then cook down a roaster full for some stuffed peppers.  That should leave me another 10 pounds on the table to deal with.  Sadly if it cools down enough I need to go pick again tonight.  There is easily another 40-50 pounds ready to go.  I also have somewhere between 1/2- 1 full bushel of colored peppers to pick and hollow out for stuffed peppers (I just free them empty since I don't have time right now to make the filling).

That leaves me the eggplant, cherry tomatoes, and poblano peppers to deal with in the coming days.  I also have a bushel of peaches I picked up yesterday sitting on my table to finish ripening.  I hoping to them Wed/Thurs. depending on how fast they finish ripening.  I am tempted to try FaithManor's peach salsa even though I generally hate sweet/savory combos. I expect other people in my family will appreciate the effort because they enjoy those combos.  And then by next weekend the tomatoes I get pick this weekend will be more than ready to be processed.  

I did get my winter cucumbers transplanted into the pot in my basement and get a trellis hooked up for them to climb.  If all goes well they should start producing late October which will time well since the outside summer veggies will pretty much be done by then and we are not as fond of squashes and root veggies they we typically have readily available in the cold months. 

Oh and the ginger I planted is started to pole through the soil.  I was pretty excited to see that as it's a totally new to me thing.

[Halftime Hope]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

I canned 15 pints of tomatoes today, half from the garden and half purchased romas. We are having too much overcast rainy weather and the tomato plants have a peck of green fruit out there, but they aren't ripening, and the plants are dying. I am happy though that I have managed 13 pints plain tomatoes, 8 pints mild taco sauce, 7 pints hot taco sauce, and five jelly jars of peach salsa which had a few Amish Paste all from my garden. I am still getting grape tomatoes, and have dehydrated 2 quart jars worth which is a lot of grape tomatoes given that they shrink to 75-80% of their original size.

I pickled 5 jelly jars of jalapenos and have more to do. There are two strings of chili peppers making up to dry.

I still have some romas left and peaches. Mark wants me to make more of the peach salsa. It has turned out to be very popular with our sons as well as him. But, while canning today, I burned two fingers on my left hand. Steam burns. Bad steam burns. I can't even bend those fingers, and the pain is bizarrely intense. This is really going to slow me down, and at the moment, I am feeling a strong aversion to heat.

Faith, first of all, congrats on all the canning AND on a great haul. Second, I have come to swear by lavender essential oil on burns. Over the years, we have had a couple of baad burns, and we haven't found anything to mitigate the pain of newly damaged nerve endings any time your skin changes moisture content, however, lavender far, far out-heals aloe. Wishing you speedy healing!

ETA: I hadn't read the other poster's comment re. lavender.  😄

Edited September 2, 2023 by Halftime Hope

[Faith-manor]

3 hours ago, Halftime Hope said:

Faith, first of all, congrats on all the canning AND on a great haul. Second, I have come to swear by lavender essential oil on burns. Over the years, we have had a couple of baad burns, and we haven't found anything to mitigate the pain of newly damaged nerve endings any time your skin changes moisture content, however, lavender far, far out-heals aloe. Wishing you speedy healing!

ETA: I hadn't read the other poster's comment re. lavender.  😄

Thanks! I tried the lavender because I actually had some. I didn't notice much difference. 400 mg of Advil does not touch the pain. The only thing working is keeping ice on it, keeping it numb. I am REALLY tired, and need to go to sleep, but I know that as soon as the ice melts it is going wake me up. I think it is going to be a long night.

I am worried. I would have thought it would be more manageable after this many hours. Besides needing to make the peach salsa tomorrow before the peaches begin n to deteriorate, I picked a half peck up honey crisp apples and they, along with another load of grape tomatoes need to be dehydrated. I am typing one handed and the thought of handling all this produce with one hand makes me leery. It is going to be so slow going. I have an apple peeler that affixes to the counter top so I think I can load apples on it and crank away, maybe. Blanching the peaches, getting them of the pit, deseeding and chopping all the peppers, garlic, sigh...I just don't know.

[Halftime Hope]

11 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

Thanks! I tried the lavender because I actually had some. I didn't notice much difference. 400 mg of Advil does not touch the pain. The only thing working is keeping ice on it, keeping it numb. I am REALLY tired, and need to go to sleep, but I know that as soon as the ice melts it is going wake me up. I think it is going to be a long night.

I am worried. I would have thought it would be more manageable after this many hours. Besides needing to make the peach salsa tomorrow before the peaches begin n to deteriorate, I picked a half peck up honey crisp apples and they, along with another load of grape tomatoes need to be dehydrated. I am typing one handed and the thought of handling all this produce with one hand makes me leery. It is going to be so slow going. I have an apple peeler that affixes to the counter top so I think I can load apples on it and crank away, maybe. Blanching the peaches, getting them of the pit, deseeding and chopping all the peppers, garlic, sigh...I just don't know.

I hope you were able to get some sleep. Desperate times call for desperate measures: how is hubby with food duty?

In my experience, the lavender didn't lessen the pain level; it did speed healing.

Also in my experience, steam burns are the worst of the lot.

Best wishes as you heal.

[Faith-manor]

1 minute ago, Halftime Hope said:

I hope you were able to get some sleep. Desperate times call for desperate measures: how is hubby with food duty?

In my experience, the lavender didn't lessen the pain level; it did speed healing.

Also in my experience, steam burns are the worst of the lot.

Best wishes as you heal.

Thank you. I did manage some sleep because I found some spray lidocaine in the medicine cabinet that I didn't know I had. It was long acting so I woke up twice in the night to reapply, and then this morning I iced it again. Now it is sore to the touch and still swollen but the firey pain has died down. So I am grateful for that. I am very relieved that I did not have a piano gig today. Since our sons were going to be home for Labor Day weekend, I had turned down substituting at the Episcopal church, and boy that turned out to be a good call! I can't imagine using those two fingers for that today.