Adventures in canning food

 Canned Tomatoe's, Cinnamon Pears & Sugar free Pears

Lot's and lot's of canned Pears!

The process of "Hot water bathing"

We were blessed with a trip to go pick free pears! A good friend of ours has an elderly neighbor with a 100 year old pear tree in her yard. She called and said we could go pear picking with them because she knew I'd been wanting to learn how to "hot water bath high acid foods" and "pressure cook" with the pressure cooker we'd been blessed with awhile back.  So pear picking we went!

We took a medium ladder with us and all the kids took turns on the ladder picking what we couldn't reach. I made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the right time and got hit in the head and mouth while standing under the tree. Pears are a lot like baseballs when falling from the tree! I had a "Angelina Jolene" lip for awhile which everyone thought was funny.

Katelyn & Denise

We picked and picked and only manged to reach about half the pears. The tree was so old that we didn't want to risk damaging the branches anymore then the weight of the pears already had. We ended up coming home with what I would estimate to be easily 150 plus pounds of pears. My fingers are stained brown and shredded from all the peeling, paring and quartering! I finally appealed to my hubby for help. He turned out to have the ability to peel something liken to a wood chipper shredding wood so he was hired!!!! Katelyn tried to help but ended cutting her finger. Nathaniel peeled about 20 and was done, Keegan had no interest whatsoever.

So now I picked up about 80 lbs of apples, still have 15 lbs of tomatoes and maybe another 40 lbs on the pears left to play with on Tuesday. My hubby was gone when I did the actual canning and when he came home and saw all my yummy jars he told me he was pretty proud of me, that felt really good. I was pretty proud of myself.  It feels good to know that if you need to preserve food for your family that you have that knowledge. It feels very "Susie Homemaker" to learn all this and it was a great experience that I will hopefully share with my grandkids someday.

Sherri <><

Exhausted!

I am sooooooooooooo tired! I've had the sinus yuck big time and in the middle of that we've been rearranging the house, moving furniture and organizing for the last 2 days, I'm beat!

I've come to the conclusion we have TOO MUCH STUFF!!!! Even with everything that I give away and get rid of it's amazing how much we still have. I had the boys go through their shorts and long sleeve shirts today and ended up with a laundry basket full of things they've grown out of just since last Fall. Man, they weren't kidding when they said those teenage boys would grow fast.

Well my BIG news is that my elliptical trainer finally arrived and my sweet hubby put the billion and one pieces together for me. I have yet too enjoy it because of being sick and exhausted but the boys are really getting into it.

Katelyn was home with her momma last week and will be back tomorrow. We're all going pear picking and then a few of us girls will learn the art of canning in the next few days.  Thankfully Denise is always willing to do a "math lab" while she's out and it really helps a lot.

Other then the normal places we run, music lessons, martial arts, ect. we've been hanging out at home trying to get things done around here. Charles is going to remodel my pantry for me soon. He's going to "gut it" and make it heavy duty with more shelves. Canning jars are heavy! I'm going through totes to see if there's anything that we can pass along to free up more space. I have to get a handle on the arts and crafts supplies. We'll probably be making lots of Christmas gifts to use a bunch of it up. I'm thinking "goodie baskets" filled with homemade things this year.

I feel that I am entering a "transition stage" in my life. My circle of friends is changing somewhat, my need for homeschool companionship is not as great, distance from family is growing because of different life paths. I'm content in my world of mothering teens, working on my health and fellowshipping with close friends. God's got a way of closing some doors and opening others... it's always an adventure!