The last of the last....this year

We are done! We worked like crazy to get our apples off the trees and stored away once they turned ripe. Here's what a box of apples looks like for us. We picked 6 of these boxes of our green apples and 2 boxes of red. Okay, mostly every night Ben and the kids would go out and pick. I only helped with about two boxes. By the fourth box of apples I couldn't even reach anymore. Ben had to stand on a ladder and use our picker to wack the apples down. Hilarious. Definitely. We have plans to wack a ton of the branches off this year because those trees are out of control. And we even thinned this year - a lot!

Apple juice and apple sauce...and lots of it. We also dehydrated about 3 gallons of apples. My kids love them and are going through them like crazy.  

Here's pink applesauce from our red apples. Paige thinks it's all hers...and tells us so. It tastes so yummy and looks so pretty. I want to make pink applesauce every year! 

We put a gallon of pink applesauce in the fridge Thursday night - it's already halfway gone. It's delicious! 

Ben packed our shelves full - in order to get the canning supplies up there, the empty boxes are on top of the jars. This first picture is all apples.  

I just counted the bottles downstairs and it's 243 jars. Plus the 15 or so that we've already eaten and reused.

While I'm writing this Ben says, "Um, we're home together and we're not canning...shouldn't we be canning?". Yeah, that's a little how it feels. We spent 4 evenings together making and canning applesauce and I did 5 days making juice. Juice is easier to do by yourself (and Ben is great at running the food strainer - something I don't like doing).  

Last night I finished canning the last of the apples. WAHOO! We turned the last half box into applejuice. We had 8 pint jars left and ran out of quart, so I bottled those and called it good. We officially are out of empty jars and FINALLY out of fruit. :) 

Our trustee canning supplies. Last night I washed the juicer and canner for the last time this year. Good thing - I have a list that actually has to do with getting ready for a baby in 5 more weeks! I better get cracking! 

Yesterday while I was gone, Ben and the kids finished picking everything out of the garden. All the pumpkins and squash and the last of the tomatoes.  However, they picked all the red and green tomatoes and filled FOUR brown paper bags up with tomatoes. When I got home and the entire counter was covered in produce, I nearly dropped. It's been like that all summer, but I'm ready to be done! However, it was quickly put away - pumpkins are big - and we already had a plan for all those tomatoes.

When our last huge batch of tomatoes came in, Ben had already made salsa, spaghetti sauce and we'd dehydrated some for cooking. Ben kept wanting to try new things and so he made tomato soup. IT WAS SO GOOD! Now, I really liked tomato soup when I was pregnant with Trenton, but I think this might just be that the soup was really good. Since that first time he's made it two more times and we took all those red tomatoes last night and got them ready for more tomato soup. As all those tomatoes turn we'll eat them or blend them up for more soup. I'm so excited!

So basically this post is to remind us that we're crazy. And that if we don't eat all that applesauce and applejuice this year (which I know sounds impossible, but we probably will make a HUGE dent in it) then we can give away some apples and other things next year and know how much to get rid of. By the end we wanted to get rid of everything left anyway!

Some things I like about canning: all that steam going for hours means it's SUPER easy to clean out your stove hood. It's wipes clean like a dream. I think that'll be my annual cleaning style.

I have learned so much about canning and storing. I never thought I could be someone who enjoys it, but it's actually been a fun adventure. I LOVE canning with Ben weeknights or weekends. Everything gets so loud sometimes that our conversations have been quite hilarious and we end up laughing much of the time. We always turn on music and end up talking about all those things that we never say to each other because they are random, don't matter much, and we don't have time. But if you're just hanging out for 4 hours or so, it's great to talk. We have pretty similar taste in music except for about 10 songs each that the other person can't stand, but does because their music is coming next. These last few weeks have been fun and though it doesn't seem romantic, I love working side by side with that man.

Don't worry - our work time together isn't over. It's just being moved to things like painting and pruning. :)