all is safely gathered in

it's over. my larder is full and canning season is over.

my big canning pot is back in storage and will not be coming out again until next may at the earliest. canning season has been a long one this year, but it has been fruitful and we went out with a bang this year.

randy's parents came to town this weekend and even though we took some time to do fun things, we took most of the day saturday to can applesauce. randy's parents are going to stop coming to visit if we keep working them this hard (in my defense, jeanie suggested it.)

we had quite the assembly line going. randy and his mom were manning the apple/peeler/corer/slicers and randy's dad and i were cleaning up with paring knifes and cutting the apples to size for cooking the applesauce. once we had three big stockpots full, we would cook them, fill the cans and process. repeat several times. we processed cans all day.

even though it took most of the day, we really did make quick work of it and having randy's parents here was so helpful. i just imagine randy and i doing this alone and i cringe at the thought. and most of the time was spent processing. the actually cutting apples, etc. went quickly with the four of us.

we ended up with 56 quarts worth of applesauce. jeanie took some for herself, but left the lion's share for me. we are set for the winter and i am so excited to have homemade applesauce. it turned out really well. last year, i did some, but not nearly enough and we were rationing ourselves. even then, we ran out in december. hopefully we make it all the way to next year this year.

i didn't take too many pictures because i was busy making applesauce. i wish i had gotten a few more. oh well. i did manage to get a few more pictures from the weekend. these are jeanie and madeleine making some fun halloween treats:

all in all we had a great weekend. thanks for coming and working so hard, mom and dad.

fall

i realized that, contrary to my usual m.o., this is the last picture that i had posted of my garden, and i really haven't talked about it much since then.

now it looks like this. it's quite the jungle. every year, we learn more and more about gardening. for instance, even though i really like tomatoes, sixteen plants was too much for the space and they ended up competing too much. only the front ones really produced like they were supposed to. don't get me wrong, we would have used the tomatoes from all sixteen plants if they had been productive (i'm aching for more tomatoes to can), but it was too ambitious for such a small plot. i feel like a hunter, wading through the jungle, every time i go out to pick.

also, no matter how much i like the idea of zucchini, i get sick of it by the end of the season. and with a small freezer, even two plants was too much this year.

and cucumbers don't vine well. they need their space to run. sad.

but, we've still had lots of tomatoes. we've eaten plenty, i've canned 20 jars of marinara sauce so far, hope to do more this weekend, and i've dried a ton of yellow pear tomatoes.

one of the awesome things about the house we are renting is that it has a nice little peach tree in the yard. not too big that it is overwhelming, but enough that we are going to be able to can, freeze, and eat the peaches from it. they have just started to ripen in the last week, so today madeleine and i went out and picked all of the fruit. in a couple days, we will be up to our ears in ripe peaches.

the tree is small enough that even madeleine could reach some of the peaches.

after picking the peaches, diane woke up from her nap and joined us outside to play.

still waking up...

not really sure...

good to go.

have i mentioned that i love fall? i love the harvest and the rush to preserve all of the food that is suddenly upon us. it's the payoff for a season of labor in the heat.

i love the crisp mornings and warm afternoons. sweater season around the corner. i love the changing colors. i love looking out my window and seeing bursts of color on the mountain. can't wait to drive up the canyon. i love the change and the move towards the holidays.

it's a great season.

canning season begins

my giant canning pot finally made an appearance this week. i realize that i'm a little behind schedule for strawberry jam, but i found some good looking strawberries and decided to go for it. i made strawberry freezer jam a couple weeks ago, but my freezer isn't as big as i would like and randy prefers canned jam, so i decided to make both kinds. 

i took my beautiful strawberries, 

hulled them, and then smashed them up with my potato masher. 

my adorable assistants.

they weren't sour, madeleine was just being goofy.

the finished product (can you see how bad our hard water is?).

i have to admit, i hate canning. it is a messy, long, hot process. but i love the fruits of my labors (get it?) for the rest of the year, so i will keep it up. planning on doing at least four dozen jars of marinara sauce once my sixteen tomato plants actually start producing fruit, at least the same amount of apples once allred's orchards start producing delicious apples, and some pears and peaches to go with those. oh, and don't forget the annual trip to pick raspberries and blackberries.

hopefully i can keep up with the harvest come end of august/september.

canning tomatoes

as part of my preservation kick, i decided to can some marinara sauce and diced tomatoes. i wish i could say that my tomato plants were producing enough for me to can some, but they aren't. don't get me wrong, they are producing enough for us to eat (almost) as many as we want fresh, but not enough to can.

so, i went and bought a big box of tomatoes and made a whole lot of marinara sauce. it is a delicious recipe and i am excited to eat it all winter.

and i even had some tomatoes left over to can diced tomatoes. these should be great in recipes. they better be, because canning is a lot of work.

this weekend? peaches. maybe pears. we'll see.