two sides

I've been cooking a lot lately. There are two sides to this urban homesteading stuff. One side is that you do everything yourself. The other side is that you do everything yourself.

Late last night I was dumping old jars full of bottled food into the compost pit because I wanted to save the jars. I have no idea how old this food is. I'm guessing the late 70's. A friend died and her daughter asked me to come over and take all her canning jars. About half of them had food in them. Like most blessings this was good and bad. The good is that I have a lot more canning jars for next year's harvest, the other side is that I was out in the dark dumping ancient food (because I didn't want my chickens eating this old food, but I was too "green" to just throw it away and I had to bury it deep in the compost pile without the chickens knowing it was there, which meant I had to do it while they were roosting, which only happens when it is dark) and having to clean everything up before I went to my evenings meeting because I didn't want all that food caking on all those jars. I am a glutton for punishment.