Hi again

Hey, It’s been a while. I am going to be a little vulnerable here and let you know I have had a rough year. It is really nice to start a new chapter in life but I think it is always hard to let go of dreams and expectations that you have held onto. For those of you that know me personally or have been reading my blog, you know that we were living on an acre with 25 fruit trees, two different types of raspberry patches and grapes as well as a huge garden for vegetables. Last year we realized that our dream of buying that property was not going to happen and we decided to move on.

When we moved to our new place we had a lot of work to do to get a garden planted, so we were not able to plant as many things as we have in the past. We also don’t have any fruit trees yet…or raspberries, or grapes. So we really didn’t have much produce this year. It was actually really depressing. I have been forced to do a lot of soul searching to decide if I was doing it all because I enjoyed it, or just because it was a problem that needed to be dealt with.

As a result I took a break from blogging. I wasn’t sure if it would be a permanent break or not. Today I had the urge to put myself out there again. I was surprised to find out that I actually have over 400 subscribers. I had no idea! Any guesses on what my most popular post has been? Okay, I will tell you. It is the plum fruit leather post. Apparently there is a lot of interest in how to use plums.

Knowing that there is actually interest makes me much more motivated to post. Really the reason I started blogging is just because I love growing and preserving food. And I love the idea of helping others by sharing what I have done. So I am curious. What are you interested in knowing more about?

If you are someone who read my post about fruit leather it might interest you to know that I recently started storing fruit leather in Mylar bags. They are better long term storage than regular plastic bags and they are less likely to be broken than a glass jar. They are also pretty inexpensive online, at least they were two years ago when I bought them. I still prefer glass jars for short term storage because they are easier to open and close.

Okay, so this is going to be a short post, with not much of helpful information but I would love to get some feedback from you.