Peaches

I must be crazy! This weekend I bought 100 pounds of peaches and 18 pounds of cherries. My thought was that on Saturday when Jacob was home to help we could get them all put up. Well, I opened the boxes of peaches and they aren't ripe enough to bottle. That means we had to do the cherries. Jacob did done yard work and helped with the kiddos and it took me ALL DAY to put those cherries and bottle them. I got 8 quarts of cherries and 3 pints of cherry pit syrup out of it, plus one delicious chery pie. My intentions were to actually freeze the cherries when I ordered them on Tuesday, but by the time we got them on Saturday, our fridge and freezer had stopped working. Not having a working freezer kinda stinks! Just so ya know! We've been furiously working to use everything up before it goes bad. 

Anyway, that left the 100 pounds of peaches for me to bottle on my own come Monday. Okay,not completely on my own. I had a 4 year old, a 2 year old an 8 1/2 month old there to help me. (A 2 year old who dumped out an entire bottle  of baby soap out on the carpet.) (and it was a full bottle too! I just opened it last week.) the two bigger kids were actually pretty good helpers. I gave them jobs in return for peach peels. :) They thought it was a good trade. Well between the four of us we used up about 80 pounds of the peaches and came out with 35 quarts of peaches and 19 jars of peach peel jam.

Lately I've really felt like I need to be getting food storage for my family. With Jacob's job, we move a lot. His work will move us, but they won't move food. That means that when I have had any sort of food storage, we have had to give it away or use the limited space in our van to haul it with us. Even so, I feel like it's an important thing for us to do. I've never done any canning before, except for what we had to do to help out as a kid, but I was never the one in charge. I mostly just had jobs akin to those I gave my kids. Anyway, it's been a new adventure we've embarked on lately. Even though it was a big project and made for a long day, I'm glad I did it. If nothing else, we will have cherries and peaches, and applesauce this coming year.