Fruits of our Elbow Greese!

This is from just 1 picking of our garden. I'm impressed! The garden work worked out well this year. Every week the kids and I weeded our garden. There wasn't even much complaining. We knew that every Tuesday morning we'd be up early and weed until it was done. Because of my new best friend (you're still my best BEST, Bestie) Preen we didn't have tons and tons! So sometimes I made up things for us to do if weeding didn't take long enough. All in all, I can't complain.

So after having all of these tomatoes I decided to bottle them. They'll be good in recipe's this winter! Noodle donned her apron (or my apron) and jumped right in. She wanted to do every step of the process - at least once. Although cutting the tomatoes wasn't her forte'!

Apples, Apples, Apples

So I went visiting teaching the other day and one sister said she had some left over apples on her trees if either of us was interested in them. The thought of fresh apple juice provoked me to take her up on free apples. So the kids and I picked a box full of apples. I've spent the last 3 days canning apples. Oddly enough, a whole steamer full of apples only yields about 2 qts of juice. Then I had all of these steamed apples left over. I didn't want to just toss them so I had the grand idea of running them through my strainer so I could make apple sauce and apple butter. Wow, I had a lot of apple pulp! All in all, I have 8 qts of apple juice, 7 qts of apple pie filling, 12 pts of apple butter and 11 pints of apple sauce. I was going to do some apple jelly from the juice, but once I was finished with the apple sauce, I was too appled out! Maybe next week I can make a batch of apple jelly!
As luck would have it, chicken has just come on sale. Just when I've had enough canning for a while, the chicken I've been waiting for is now on sale. So I guess I'm not quite done with canning!
Meanwhile, I still have laundry to do, a bathroom to clean and a sticky kitchen floor to mop. But not tonight, I'm too tired. :) We did, however, get our garage cleaned out! My kids are on Fall Break so they helped me with the garage. Buddy has been a great help with the canning too. But they were all tired tonight and said they'd be glad when school starts again. "Being home is too much work!" That was my goal!

Move Over Martha Steuart!!

Well, with the help of Lewlew, I finished canning tomatoes. She was such a help ;) She was wet from head to waste by the time she had enough. But I was glad for her "help" even though at times she was more of a hindrance. It was fun talking and singing with her.

This picture is of Lewlew and my mom helping me can peaches.

We ended up canning 12 quarts of peaches and 12 quarts of tomatoes. Now for the grape juice and jelly.