Canning, and canning, and more canning...

Well, I'm not going to lie, but I'm a little glad that were just about done with the canning season. We actually did quite a bit this year. I think the only thing we have left is our beets that we want to pickle that are buried in a hole in our garden, that we will hopefully get to this week. We did apple juice, apple sauce, apricots, apricot jam, peaches, peach jam, grape juice, beets, stewed tomatoes, I cant remember what else there is, seems like more. Anyway, a lot of work, and late nights. We did a lot this year with my sister Krista and her hubby which was fun. I'm glad I have a willing husband who will stay up late and do it with me, and spend his Saturdays helping. Its not so easy to do it during the day by myself when the kids are crying at my feet. But, it is worth it!!

This was one night we had been going for a few hrs, then we put the kids to bed while we still had a long time to go. Kaylee was supposed to be asleep, but she snuck down and wanted to help, so we put her right to work and she was a trooper! She stayed with us almost to the end, until about 11 when we finally made her go to bed. She did great and is a really good help

When we had a ton of apricots to do and Dave had a final paper due in one of his classes, my sister Alexa and my niece Kaycie made the mistake of coming over and saying hi! I put them right to work and they worked their tails off until about midnight. They saved me!!

Aspen mashing the apricots for jam :)

I love seeing that the hard work was worth it!- look at all that yummy apricot jam!

I'm sure thats sanitary!!! :) guess its a good thing we process them at such high heat, right?

this day I think we all swore if we never saw another apple again in our lives, we would be just fine with that! We were given a bunch of crab apples, but they were bigger than normal crab apples, but still small. We were juicing them and for every apple we would get a few drops. At the end of the day I think we ended up with like 57 quarts of apple juice! Think of how stinkin many little apples that is to wash and run though the juicer!! It was a long day, but the kids helped so good and we were able to finish in time to go for a family motorcycle ride. That was a good bribe to have the kids work hard, and they did!

Briggs was a good washer. I think he took little bites out of most the apples:)

I do love to can, and I especially love to see the food sitting on the shelf, I am excited to do more of it when the kids get older and can help more. One day I would really like to get into it and be creative! But for now, we will stick to the easy stuff!