It is fall as of yesterday, so of course this means harvest time. Now I love to can, so of course I had to make jam, ..... and apple butter, ..... and dehydrated apples (but no salsa this year).
Last week I did one batch of jam and one of apple butter. Yesterday my mom came and we were able to get through 5 batches of jam and one of apple butter. We also dehydrated 2 batches of apples.
The thing I learned about canning is that helping hands make light work. I had the kids pick apples and plums last week. My mom arrived Sunday night and we started working Monday morning after getting everyone off to school. Jayden and Katia were in charge of keeping Emma and Delta happy. I also let Jayden help with some other things. He ran the food processor (while wearing earmuffs), laid apples on the dehydrator, and helped run things here and there.
It was a tiring day, but I kept telling myself, "Clay loves my jam." "My jam is Clay's favorite." (Clay is my nephew who loves the plum jam.) This made the fruity hands, hours standing, and sticky floor worth it.
The plums were the hardest to process. They don't release their pit as easily as cherries and apricots. You have to either cut around it and lose some of the fruit, or squish the meat off the stone. This means that your hands are stained for a few days. I figured that someone would have found an easy way to do this process, but after doing a search online, everyone was just complaining about the same thing I was. Oh well.
I am glad to say that I have only 3 more batches of jam to do.
Katia was very good at playing with the babies. She got so tired that she fell asleep in the baby swing. Don't ask me how she climbed into it.
Emma was feeling abandoned by the end of the day. She finally fell asleep about 10:00 after I held and played with her for about 2 hours straight. Pin It
No comments:
Post a Comment