Millions of Peaches

This was my first attempt at canning, so it was a learning process - I had no idea how much you really need to "stuff" the jars.  So, as you can see, some jars are holding less than their capacity...

So, there weren't quite a million, but it seemed like that many.  On labor day Sam noticed that a local farm still had you-pick peaches.  At $.60/pound, we thought it might be good to finally put some canning supplies we had laying around to good use.  I told Sam to pick about 3 apple boxes worth, thinking that would be enough to can a few batches, and have plenty for fresh eating. Well, he came home with 80 lbs worth of peaches!  Just in case you are wondering, 80 lbs of a peaches equals:

24 Quarts and 11 pints of canned peaches
15 pints of jam
6 half pints of freezer jam
2 quart bags of frozen peaches
1 batch of fruit leather (which failed...)
2 batches of baby food
1 peach crisp
and as many fresh peaches as you and your family of 6 can eat in 4 days, with more to spare!


Next time I think we'll pick a few less peaches...  Sam was a wonderful help in the kitchen with all the canning, and the kids are already enjoying them for after school snacks.

Cherry Picking

We headed out to Ray French Orchard again this year - this time to pick Benton Cherries, which apparently ripen earlier than the Rainier.  The trees were bursting with ripe cherries on this, the first day of picking.

The kids had a blast picking the cherries - Olivia ate most of what she picked, and ended up making a huge mess out of herself, as she was using her fingers to pick the pit out before she ate them.

Noah really LOVED this, and it was hard to get him to stop picking.

He's usually the one that asks me over and over why we are doing an outing, and when it's going to be over, and if we can go home every other minute.  But for cherry picking, he kept exclaiming how much fun he was having, and how he didn't ever want to leave.

Harrison was running around trying to make sure everyone was picking the best, most ripe cherries.  Here's him explaining what you should (left side) and should not (right side) pick.

Levi spent the whole outing asleep in the bjorn.

 Some of my fondest childhood memories involved picking fruits and vegetables with my family, so I'm glad we are able to enjoy that with our family too.