A dreary Monday but blessed day to be canning

Sometimes the list of things yet to preserve looms ahead of me like a big cloud. It seems like it's unendng. I like to can but it can be challenging to fit it in with homeschooling.

So already yesterday, we decided to cancel school today and help each other with the big job.

You see, I'd been planning to work up the remaining three bushels of apples, sometime.... I was able to attain an old fashioned copper kettle including a stand at a local flea market and the only thing I yet need to put it to use is the long wooden stirring paddle. All along I knew Merv probably wouldn't be able to craft one this year. But I was still hoping....

And then yesterday (Sunday, of all days) when I walked past the apple boxes in our tiny basement/cold storage to shelve the crockpot I'd just used for our pot roast dinner, I smelled a VERY ripe apple smell and was thoroughly disappointed to see that many were rotting and it was high time to put the idea aside of making apple butter in the copper kettle this year.

This year there's been an apple shortage. Warm weather causing the apple trees to bloom a bit too early in the spring followed by a freeze has affected many orchards in the east coast including some of our local orchards. I was fortunate to purchase all the apples that I needed at a good price. I bought mostly seconds but made sure the ones I reserved for our future apple butter day were number ones. But like many have been saying, this year apples are not keeping as long and that certainly held true for me.

With that, today we were forced to work up our apples. We didn't get a really early start in fact, it was more like midmorning when we started as we also had laundry.

Everyone pitched in and helped out. We especially like our electric food processor at a time like this. Normally, we process the cooked apples outside but today was just too damp, cool, and rainy so we worked at the kitchen table.

Zachary has once stated, "I just love canning days like this. I love when the whole family helps one another."

We finished out the day with 20 quarts applesauce, 9 quarts apple butter that was cooking in the roaster all afternoon and evening, 12-1/2 quarts pumpkin, 9 quarts pears.

Oh, and I saved the pumkin seeds, washed and drained them well, seasoned  them with the savory flavor, and roasted them. They make a great snack!

I know it doesn't sound like a whole lot, but processing different things seem to take more time than having for example, a big apple day.

All in all, we are very thankful. We weren't able to finish our half bushel of carrots so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Thankfully, our list is dwindling down. We've yet to can more pears, squash, and pumpkin.

On second thought, I may try dehydrating the pumpkin as I'm running out of jars. Dehydrate2Store.com is an excellent source for any questions you may have regarding dehydrating for long term storage and I found some info on the pumpkin while relaxing a bit before retiring.