I held my breath as I reached back into the furthest, darkest most spider web encrusted box at the back of the barn.

 I wondered to myself  – am I going to pull out a snake-like I did a few years ago?  Yeah I’ll admit when that happened I let out a big girly scream threw the box down and took off running.

Fortunately this adventure into the unknown dark crevices only yielded, dead spiders, crusty dirt and a few unknown dark spots.

My mission was to retrieve some of my wide mouth canning jars that have been stored away forever and a day.

Sweet potato farmer came a-calling the other day with a jumbo head of cabbage and I was on a mission to make sauerkraut.

The spidery jars are the real deal yeah they are real spiders, but what I mean is that they are vintage jars.

How can anything so simple make me smile so much?

A bath in soap and bleach for sure.

I found easy instructions for making sauerkraut in a canning jar here.

I think the cabbage looks like giant mushrooms.

All sliced and ready to stuff in jars.  Below, I added dried beans to pint-sized jars to weigh the cabbage down.

I’m hoping in the future to do so more fermenting.  I also entered to win a giveaway for a fermentool, there is still time to enter if  you are interested, go  here.

Meanwhile this weekend, as a Nor’Easter blew in, the Cottage men and friend worked on battening down the hatches on the ole rooster barn.

The rooster weather vane was a house-warming present and has been presiding over the barn for almost 23 years.

Thank goodness we only had rain and none of that white stuff.  The guys got this side and the back covered in tar-paper before the rain chased them in.

The wind howled and the leaves swirled.

We lost power during the night, and I was wishing our generator wasn’t on the fritz.  I’m sure we are going to be needing it before long.

 Pouff! No sooner did I type those words and hit the publish button – the power went out and the internet down.  So a few hours later, we are back up running again.

We took that opportunity to go out and hang some of our vintage petroleum collection that has been scattered around and stuck in storage for way too long.

Have a good week y’all.

See you later, Bye!

Kim