Harvest

As selfish and terrible as this may sound, if there is ever a time I miss the luxuries of living in Utah its harvest time each year.  I can't tell you how much I miss being able to pick berries, peaches, apples, pears, apricots, etc. from Grandma's orchard.  

Living in Oregon I was still able to enjoy the fruits of the season going to "you pick" farms. But the last four years in Texas were painful as far as harvesting goes.  No fruit grows anywhere near Abilene.  It was so sad.  

You can imagine my excitement when I discovered that Kentucky is not like Texas in this way!  I went to the local farmer's market and discovered they even grow berries here!  Hooray!  Unfortunately I missed strawberries for the year and the raspberries had a short growing season this year due to the weather.  So two batches of blackberry jam (and some strawberry jam from berries at the grocery store) were all I was able to do when we first arrived.  

After cousin camp I decided to try and get my hands on some produce so I could really do some preserving this year... an email showed up in my in box that someone in the ward had apples falling off the tree and they were available to anyone who wanted to come and pick!  So I loaded up the 5 kids and off we went to pick apples.  We ended up coming home with three 5 gallon buckets full of pretty small, imperfect apples.

Now onto the second reason I miss being in Utah during harvest time... I have to can by myself!  Boo hoo!  But I did it this year!  And it felt good.  And I think it looks good too!

I found a farm that still had peaches available and rushed out to buy some so I could get some more jam made for the year... I was already down to one container from the three batches made earlier in the year.

So what you see here is two days worth of hard work.  I got 6 half pints of apple butter (first time ever even tasting it and YUMM-O!), 3 batches of peach freezer jam, 7 pints of Grandma's Peach Blush Jam, and 26 quarts of applesauce.  I even took pictures along the way to do a tutorial on canning applesauce on my food blog... when I get around to it.  Add that to the 6 pints of salsa I made this year from tomatoes given to me by a neighbor and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself!

 The kids thought I was the coolest mom ever.  They came home from school and saw my juicer out and asked (in awed voices), "Did you buy that today?!"  No, was the reply, it just sat in a box for four year while we lived in Texas...  then they tasted the applesauce.  They were impressed.  Jonas asked if he could take it to his friend's birthday party, why? I wondered... because "its homemade applesauce!" duh, Mom.

So family in Utah, be thankful that you have each other to work together, to share the load, to enjoy the free harvest... Me? I'll be thankful that I don't have to split the end product with anyone but my crew, heaven knows we'll go through it all fast enough.