We have finally finished preserving our peaches.
Well, technically I'm waiting for the canner to boil so I can set the timer for a half hour to process the last four quarts of peaches so we're not quite done yet. If we're lucky, though, we'll end up with all four quarts when we're finished.
It seems like we've been dealing with fruit forever.
Last week a friend of mine posted a picture of her impeccably organized storage room with the caption, "Applesauce, strawberry jam, blueberry jam, red pepper jelly, spaghetti sauce, Saskatoon pie filling, apple pie filling, peaches and pears! It’s been a busy two days! I still have a few more batches to do."
And I about died. Because how in the world did she do all of that on her own?!
We have had four adults working on our fruit and we've managed to procure: 6 pints of spiced plum jam and 32 quarts (inshallah) of peaches. Oh, and two of our jars of peaches exploded in the canner (so we should have had 34 quarts but what can you do? (turn it into peach leather, that's what)) and I knocked a jar off the counter onto the tile floor and it shattered into a billion pieces.
Luckily my friend Jamie posted the following on Facebook: "It is currently 12:25am. We are waiting for the water in the canner to boil so we can start a 35min timer on pear sauce. Ellie will be awake in no more than 7 hours. Everything is sticky. I think we have made a terrible mistake."
And I was like, "Jamie, you are my spirit animal."
I don't know why canning feels so overwhelmingly difficult to me? Is it the fact that I always have children underfoot? Is it the fact that even when we wait to can things after bedtime the baby inevitably wakes up screaming? Do I have butterfingers? Or does everyone break a jar every now and then?
I just keep telling myself this will all be worth it in February when I'm getting anxious for the peaches to be on again. Home canned peaches are the best!
Karen has been keeping a tally of our efforts this year (which Benjamin was rather excited to see because he's learning about the tally system in school). In case you're interested, we've done:
Well, technically I'm waiting for the canner to boil so I can set the timer for a half hour to process the last four quarts of peaches so we're not quite done yet. If we're lucky, though, we'll end up with all four quarts when we're finished.
It seems like we've been dealing with fruit forever.
Last week a friend of mine posted a picture of her impeccably organized storage room with the caption, "Applesauce, strawberry jam, blueberry jam, red pepper jelly, spaghetti sauce, Saskatoon pie filling, apple pie filling, peaches and pears! It’s been a busy two days! I still have a few more batches to do."
And I about died. Because how in the world did she do all of that on her own?!
We have had four adults working on our fruit and we've managed to procure: 6 pints of spiced plum jam and 32 quarts (inshallah) of peaches. Oh, and two of our jars of peaches exploded in the canner (so we should have had 34 quarts but what can you do? (turn it into peach leather, that's what)) and I knocked a jar off the counter onto the tile floor and it shattered into a billion pieces.
Luckily my friend Jamie posted the following on Facebook: "It is currently 12:25am. We are waiting for the water in the canner to boil so we can start a 35min timer on pear sauce. Ellie will be awake in no more than 7 hours. Everything is sticky. I think we have made a terrible mistake."
And I was like, "Jamie, you are my spirit animal."
I don't know why canning feels so overwhelmingly difficult to me? Is it the fact that I always have children underfoot? Is it the fact that even when we wait to can things after bedtime the baby inevitably wakes up screaming? Do I have butterfingers? Or does everyone break a jar every now and then?
I just keep telling myself this will all be worth it in February when I'm getting anxious for the peaches to be on again. Home canned peaches are the best!
Karen has been keeping a tally of our efforts this year (which Benjamin was rather excited to see because he's learning about the tally system in school). In case you're interested, we've done:
- 35 trays of plum leather
- 6 pints of plum jam
- 11 trays of pear leather
- 60 ounces of dried peach slices (27 trays)
- 84 trays of peach leather
- 32 quarts of peaches
- 4 gallon bags of frozen peach slices
And we're still waiting to can some pears and make some applesauce.
And we're exhausted. And everything is sticky.
But it will sure be yummy later on...
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