Bountiful Harvest

I have been canning up a storm lately. In addition to our garden that Jim planted, I met a friend, Roger, (he is 72) that works an acre garden for one of his friends. Roger invited myself along with the family to come and harvest whatever we'd like from the garden. The kids had so much fun running through the corn stalks, picking broccoli, corn, green beans, peppers and tomatoes. They also like playing by the ginormous pumpkins. I don't think there is one vegetable that Roger didn't plant. We came back with a TON of fresh produce along with a huge bucket of fresh picked apples. While we were there we met the owner of the 7 acre property and he said that now since he met us, we are welcome to pick whatever we'd like and we also have access to all of his apple trees and grapes on the property. As Jim and I were picking apples, the kids were hunkered down in the grape vines picking and eating the fresh grapes as if they were candy.

With all of this fresh food, I have canned so far peaches, peach butter, applesauce, halved tomatoes, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and chili. Today I am canning apple butter and I also think I will be doing some apple juice and apple pie filling in the next week or so. I am also planning on doing some pumpkin. In addition to canning I have froze some grated zucchini, a ton of corn kernels and a ton of green beans. We ate the broccoli and with our cabbage the size of Jim's head, I am going to make and freeze some cabbage rolls. I think between the canning and the freezer meals that I will be making to go in our deep freeze, i should be set and ready for winter.

The kids have enjoyed this process too. Isaac has been a huge help with peeling and de-seeding tomatoes.