Prairie Farmstead Ponderings

Posted By FarmerJ on January 22, 2010

I finally completed a project that has been gnawing on me for about three years now!  Of late, I’ve been experiencing what Darling Husbie has coined as ‘Projects Beget Projects’ ~ you know, you set out to complete one task and in the process another task spawns, so you tend to that task which quickly creates another…and so on, and so on.

The pantry has been that project for me.  It all started with the simple relocation of the shelves.  I moved the shelves out of the under-the-stairwell closet to a corner of the Man Cave.  Since I had everything off the shelves, it was the perfect opportunity to do a detailed inventory of what was on those shelves.  A project begot by a project.

That spooled Darling Husbie, and before I knew it, Project: Pantry was bred.  A project begot by a project. Getting the framing up and sheathed really lent itself to being able to visualize other rooms we’d talked about, and so yes ~ from that, the gambrel-shaped passage from the future kitchen/dining area to the hallway leading to the future guest suite was born.  A project begot by a project.

Back to the task of inventorying the items on the shelves.  As you can guess, the items in the pantry are my stock items.  I have a rather large food ‘cupboard’ in the kitchen upstairs where my every day supplies are kept.  I may as well get those supplies inventoried while I’m at it to make sure things weren’t approaching that magical ‘Best Used By’ date.  A project begot by a project.

So…since I had that cupboard emptied, I just couldn’t see putting those fabulous gallon-size jars Darling Husbie bought for me back on the shelf with those ugly, unevenly torn pieces of scotch, masking, packing and duct tape with the contents written with a blue, green or black Sharpie, could I?!  Some jars weren’t even labeled ~ do you know that unless you’re paying really close attention, in a dimly lit cupboard, wheat flour, corn meal and Masa Harina can look strikingly similar?  The results in substituting one for another in a recipe?  Not so similar.  I’d been meaning to properly label those jars for years now.

My friend, Laura at Ten Things Farm, had given me some cute labels quite some time ago already.  I’d really been meaning to label those storage jars.  Do you know that unless you’re paying really close attention, again in a dimly lit cupboard, red wheat berries and kamut or white wheat berries and pearled barley can look strikingly similar?  They can.  The black beans and the split peas?  Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be able to distinguish those two.

Anyway! I finally took a few minutes and created a Word document that coincided with the spacing of the sheets of cute labels Laura gave me and made some proper labels for my storage jars.  A project begot by a project. I’m so excited!  Do you know the pressure one has having a project like this hanging over her head for years?

Well, I’m here to tell you ~ the jars look cute, it feels good to have it done…and I’m only a little concerned about whether I got the red wheat berries and kamut labeled correctly.  ♥

Categories: Plainly Ponderings
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