Eight pm, and I feel like I’ve hardly stepped outdoors today.

I remember the air was still and warm early this morning. I milked by the light of the stars and a sliver of a crescent moon.

I remember the cool drips of water in the freshly watered vegetable garden just after breakfast.

But, aside from a hurried trip to the goat paddock with an armload of corn husks or carrot tops, I haven’t been outside since eight am.

Just after breakfast, the whole family got to work making the year’s Summer Soup (which I’ve blogged about before). We spent the morning chopping vegetables and making up the soup together, then I settled in alone for the long slog at the pressure canner.

It was a hot day to be in the kitchen canning soup. I thought it was just that I had four burners and the oven going much of the afternoon, but when my daughter walked through the kitchen looking wilted, I realised it was just a hot day.

That was the closest I got to knowing what it was like out there.

But I’ll appreciate this lovely summer day spent indoors—over and over again all winter. The final tally for the day was nineteen quarts of soup and six quarts of vegetable stock. That’s a lot of summer, stored up to cheer us on a cold winter evening.