Tomatoes and a Shadowbox - September 28, 2026 @goldenoakfarm

On Monday morning I was up just before 5AM and got my post up. It was still raining, the 3rd day of clouds and rain. I fed the cat at 6AM, pulled the shades up at 7AM and made some breakfast at 8AM for the moving every hour part of the day.

But I had overdone it on Sunday and was a hurting unit. I started on the bills/budget and was in the middle of a mess when it was getting to be 7:30AM so I messaged my #2 intern and asked if she could come for 9AM instead of 8AM. She agreed so I was able to work my way through the mess and be ready and cleaning the kitchen when she arrived.

The first job was to bring all the frozen tomatoes up from the freezer and weigh them. There were 8 bags and all together they came to 32.66 lbs. I make a double recipe and I planned to double that for a year’s worth of sauce. So I’d need 24 – 30 lbs. As I had extra, I decided to make 2½X the double recipe, so I saved out my biggest tomato and a few plums to make 37.5 lbs.

Once the tomatoes were back in the freezer, we washed and cored the extras for the freezer. There were also 2 ripe Kapija peppers and they were prepped for the freezer too.

I’d found a box with a fruit divider and we started sorting the tomatoes on the sills. A good many of they had gone bad over the weekend, so we had that mess to clean up. The fully ripe ones went into the box and we set the rest to fully ripen.

Then we headed out to the Survival Center in the rain and dropped the box off.

Once back home, we set up to finish chopping and freezing the Walla onions. We got nine 1 cup bags and one ½ cup bag.

After the cider pressing, I had washed the couch cover. I use a queen or king sized bed quilt and hold it in place with upholstery pins. I hate putting those pins in, with my hands the way they are.

So I asked my #2 intern to help me get the pins in tightly. That took a while to do.

I checked my lists and there wasn’t much we could do in the ¾ hour left. Then I spied the box I’d found when I cleaned up the 8’ table on Sunday.

Back in 2021 just after my husband had died, my sister was working on her shadowboxes and suggested I make a small one. So I invested a considerable amount of time and money into creating this. But I had never finished it. It’s been waiting on the 8’ table ever since.

I could have sworn I had another small box of decorations, but I could not find it. So we went with what I had. Because they had sat on the table for 5 years near the wood stove, there were several repairs to be made. The wall paper had come off one wall, the rocker leg had separated, baseboards had come loose, and a picture needed attention.

So we set about that and then planned where things would go. We couldn’t finish setting it up by the time for her to go, as glue had to dry.

But later in the afternoon, I finished setting it up. Now I just need to find a safe place for it, away from a cat.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch watching the rest of “Scarlett”. I got the shades pulled and headed to bed around 8:30PM. It was still raining.

On Tuesday I hope to get some more done on the bills/budget, clean up the kitchen, and my helper friend comes at 10:30AM. We need to check the tomatoes, harvest what’s come along in the garden, along with squash and peppers, take the extra to the Survival Center, do errands and chores, and if there’s time, inventory the amendment shed. So another busy day…