More Canning

The pears are done now too!  I am so excited to have this all behind me!  Thankfully I have a good sister in law who knows how to do this kind of stuff to help me along!  Plus it is always more fun to do with somebody!  They turned out yummy, BEAUTIFUL!  These would deserve blue ribbons at the fair!

Emma took the day off from school, she thought she might be sick, she wasn't, but I think she just needed a break, so did I so I was happy to have an excuse to stay home too!

This is what I look like after a long day of canning:  

Not a pretty sight, but a happy one!

Millions of Peaches!

DONE!  Yeah what a good feeling!  The sad part is I have done all of this work and taken a whole day to get it done and I only ended up with 28 quarts.  I thought I was doing SO many, I did so many, I just always expect it to fill the whole pantry and it never comes close.  Well at least I am getting closer, next on the agenda is pears, that should be  fun day!

Thankfully Sara came to help me, I haven't canned peaches in a couple of years, and have never by myself.  I was glad she knew what she was doing!  And it gave my kids someone to beat up on!  Poor Tayson and Jaci took their beatings well today, I just LOVE my obedient children!  This is what they looked like all day, Claire didn't make it out of her PJ’s:

And Justin vegged all day, he is KING of the remote!

 

I am glad we got it done for another year!  Or for a couple of days anyway…..

Harvest Time!

Harvest is heavily upon us.  We are harvesting all but one crop RIGHT NOW!  (Sugar beets, which we could be, they have opened for early beets thank goodness we don't need to dig any early!)Seriously, we need to work on timing!  We have just started cutting hay, which I GOT to swath for a couple of days, (you know we are desperate when I get asked to help!)  We have been going on Grain harvest for over a month and still have a couple of weeks left of that.   Corn chopping is in full swing (we have that custom hired) THANKFULLY!   To top it all off Potatoes have started in Richfield and down on the farm.  We will go straight to Arco when we finish in Richfield so hopefully start there Monday.  We just LOVE having the harvestings going on around us, it isn't half as fun when Ryan has to commute hours away.  The kids BEG to go help with potatoes, which we have everyday, well when we haven't been swathing.  Ashley asked if the bus could drop her off at the cellar today after school so she could just go straight to work!  Hopefully she will be so ambitious when she is really big enough to help…..

Our corn crop is almost in the books until another year!  It has been fun to watch them chop it.  Equipment sure has improved since I was a little girl when dad used that little pull behind chopper.  These guys fly through the corn like nothing, Ryan says they do 10 rows at a time, I think dad did 3?  I don't know but it wasn't many!

It is amazing to see them shoot that corn across the pivot practically, they have to be a good aim!  We haven't enjoyed the rumbling of trucks WELL after 10 pm, makes going to bed hard for kids and all of the dust is dusty, but the rest is still fun!  I have got my own fall work I should be doing, I have three boxes of peaches and two pears I should be doing instead of this but,  awww, they will still be there tomorrow!

Canning in the winter?

Ryan helped me can 35 quarts of applesauce last week. We were both tired, but so happy we got it done! This is just one of the many things that went on last week. The girls were out of school most of the week for girls basketball tournaments, which btw our girls are STATE CHAMPS! Two years in a row! Mom and Dad, Trish, and Aunt Kathy came to my house on the way to my cousins Tyler's funeral. Bret came also, so we had a little house full on Tuesday night, which was nice to see everyone. (mom brought all the apples for the applesauce) Justin, Claire and I went for a little walk this morning to see if we had any "signs of spring." I was VERY pleasantly surprised we have something (not sure what) coming up out in the flower beds! We were really excited and hooping and hollering! We LOVE Spring! Too bad it was -4 this morning.....still feels like spring to us though! It has been a busy good week!