November 27, 2021

Good morning!

‘Tis Saturday.

I think I mentioned all the canning I did this summer? Invincible and thrifty homesteader that I am, I even canned some of our tomatoes in a sauce with garlic, onions, oregano, and basil that I’d grown myself.

I proudly lined them up on the shelf in the basement, six beautiful, pint-sized time-capsules of nurturance. Take that, world!

And then yesterday, someone pointed me to the Instagram account of a man in Vermont. Most of his photos show him splitting logs or sawing boards or carving bowls by hand—usually shirtless, because this is Instagram after all. But one photo shows his tomato sauce production for the summer. There were 50 quarts lined up three rows deep on the shelves. Fifty. Quarts.

Mark Twain once called comparison the death of joy. Theodore Roosevelt set aside the murder charges and just accused comparison of joy thievery. Both are true, though. Nothing good comes from measuring ourselves with someone else’s yardstick.

Repeat after me:

"You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody."

—Maya Angelou

Onwards with whatever’s on your shelves,

Clara