It's that time of year again!

Today we started our annual "putting away the harvest." The cucumber plants have been toying with us; lots of blossoms, lots of small baby cucumbers, but none large enough to "do up." However for the last couple days we have been picking a small amount that finally added up to enough to pickle. Yesterday we cleaned them all up and put them down in the lime. This morning Kent scrubbed them down again while the oatmeal cooked. After our morning walk, I picked dill and grape leaves. The jars were washed and ready to assemble. I recovered the peeled garlic from the freezer(left over from the last pickle party of 08), and stuffed 7 jars with dill, garlic and grape leaves. Then comes the cukes. I learned how to be an efficient jar stuffer from my dearly departed mother-in-law. Putting the pickles in the jars was one of the first things I learned from her back in 1985. She had worked at Vlasics once upon a time and talked about the foreman who would tell the ladies on the line, "one more pickle in that jar!" We did 7 quart jars of pickles and used less than 2 quarts of brine; that's a pretty good pickle to brine ratio!

The jars were processed and are now sitting on the island cooling off. There is few things as satisfying as hearing the pinging of the jars sealing.