Gardening, Canning and Blogging

Relating blogging in terms of other normal activities I'm involved in makes it easier for me to blog some days.  This is the time of year that I am extremely busy between gardening and canning.  Over the bulk of the busy canning season I will process have processed at least 10 hampers of tomatoes, fruits and vegetables from my garden, local orchards and farmers.  I process upwards of 1,200 jars of food each year with about 800 canned during the busiest time and the rest throughout the year.   During this time the canner will quite often run 3 or more times a day.   I prefer to can at night when it is cooler which means quite often I will be finishing up a canner load at 3 or 4 in the morning, crawl into bed until about 8 AM then go at it again. 

I tend to be very sporadic with blogging as in I don't have any type of a schedule.  What I do it sit down and do a bit of blogging while something is cooking or while the canner is running if I don't have more prep work to do.  So blogging is done in little bits of time that I can siphon off thoughout the day.  Blogging very much reminds me of both gardening and canning.  On one of the forums I follow someone made the comment that gardening is always a crapshoot.  While it is true that you can't reap what you haven't sown you can't control certain events that can wipe out a garden in a few minutes.  All you can do despite all your effort is pick up the pieces and start again.  Canning is a a bit more precise and you do have more control but you can't can without the pre-existing knowledge combined with the willingness to keep up to date with the newest recommendations.  Both gardening and canning take a good deal of prep work and maintenance much the same as blogging. 

Much like gardening and canning if you don't stay up to date with what is happening in the blogospere, be willing to make blog changes, do all the blogging prep work and put in the effort then you are destined to fail.  At the same time you can do all this and still fail.  Blogging is still very much a crapshoot.  What makes one blog highly successful over another sometimes might just boil down to a little old fashioned luck in addition to the work.

Garden Gnome
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