Heat. Heat. That’s how this day started—cold, blustery, wind blowing—so we did what makes sense around here: we gathered up last year’s potatoes and put ’em up before they start going backwards. This video ain’t so much a step-by-step “how-to” as it is a real look at how we live. We all sat around the kitchen table peeling, cutting out bad spots, watching for green, laughing, and just being together. And I’ll tell you, canning goes a whole lot faster when everybody pitches in. Once they were peeled, I filled quart jars up to that first ring, added a teaspoon of salt, covered them with water, and pressure canned them at 10 pounds of pressure for 40 minutes. I also showed y’all last year’s jars down in my “grocery store” (root cellar area) and talked about why I like draining off that starchy water before cooking—then warming them in clean water instead. To round out the day, I threw together a real-life supper: vegetable soup (whatever the mood strikes) with canned veggies, canned hamburger in tomato juice, a handful of fresh potatoes, and a little heat from dried cayenne—plus grilled cheese on fresh bread and some of my winter “hay butter.”