MY JOURNAL

February 8th, 1999

This Morning

Today I awoke to a glorious fine day. It is unusually warm for the mountains this time of the year. Well now that I'm all moved in I suppose I'd better start trying to fix the place up a bit. It's been a long time since anyone's lived here and there is so much to be done. Usually this time of the year it would be so cold I would stay inside and do chores, but it is so beautiful outside that I've decided to tackle cleaning out the spring house and get my pickling barrel ready. Well, gotta go for now.

Evening

I am really tuckered out this evening. That spring house and pickle barrel hadn't been cleaned for years. Let me tell you about it. For those of you who don't know what a spring house is I'll start at the beginning. My spring house is a little shed that sits over my spring hole. My spring is across the creek from the cabin; it is where I get my fresh water from and cool my perishable vittles at. I had to repair some boards on it and replace the hinges on the door. I also had to fix some shelves that had tumbled down. Then came the cleaning; normally that would only entail sweeping up the ground away from the hole and scrubbing out the trough that holds the food jars and straightening up the shed. But today I had to clean out a lot of trash and dust all the shelves, crates, jars and crocks too. Not to mention the spider webs, they were everywhere. By God's grace alone I got it done and on to the pickling barrel. A pickling barrel is made of wood and a good one usually holds 50 gallons. It has to be emptied and scrubbed to prepare it for each use. You use a pickle barrel to preserve and store large amounts of pickled foods. It holds all the pickled foods till they are done and then you open it and move them into jars for normal use. I use mine mostly for good old fashioned pickles. I had to empty old brine from this one, then scrub it with a mixture of salt, vinegar and baking soda, then rinse it with boiling water I heated on the fire I made beside the spring house. Now I've sealed it back up and after another good rinsing it will be ready to hold the next crop of cucumbers. Had me a good dinner of beans and cornbread that were cooking all day and now I think I'll just go on to bed and talk to the Creator some before I fall asleep.