Canning Season... It's that time of year again

Yesterday my neighbor and I canned 75 pounds of peaches.  To say we were tired of peaches would be an understatement.  My feet were so tired and my back hurt so badly by the time I went to bed last night.  We started at 9:30 in the morning and I finished about 9:30 that night.  It would have taken substantially less time, but we have six munchkins between the two of us, all under the age of six, so someone always needs something.  I now have 30 jars of peaches in my cold storage room though, so I'm happy.  Now onto the next item... salsa.

They sure are pretty when they are all bottled like this.

It's That Time Of Year Again

Canning season is in full swing here in my neck of the woods.  Unfortunately, I've been sick the last two weeks and haven't done anymore than seven measly jars of spaghetti sauce (one of which broke while in the pressure canner and another that we've already eaten), but I plan on doing more if I ever get healthy again.  I've got more sauce to do, hopefully I'll get some more peaches done this year, I'd also really like to do some apple pie filling just because I think it would be fun.  Some salsa would be great too since we practically drink salsa around here.  And, I'd really like to get some pear-apple sauce made again.  I made it once a couple of years ago and the kids LOVED it.

 I was really glad it was a clean break and that it didn't shatter and also that it broke while sealed up in the canner, cause otherwise that would have been a really awful mess to clean up.

Yum!

Canning and Preserving Goings On...

A couple of weeks ago two of my dearest girlfriends and I got together and canned 84 jars of peaches in one day.  Holy cow!  That was a long day and quite the sticky mess to clean up.  Fortunately, my father-in-law David was here and he did a great job keeping all of our six kids entertained and out of our way.  This has since inspired me to want to can some more stuff this year.  My plans are to can some apple pie filling, apple butter, pears, chicken and turkey.  I've canned chicken before and I'm assuming turkey is the same and last year I canned applesauce and pear sauce and now that I've done peaches I would like to attempt pears, but I guess we'll see.  It depends on how much free time I can find in the next month.  On Saturday night, I managed to make a couple pints of raspberry jam which is quite tasty although I would cut down on the sugar next time.  It was way too sweet for me.  On Saturday I also managed to get our last crop of zucchini grated, bagged and in the freezer.  I was able to get 11 cups of grated zucchini, so don't be surprised if you get some zucchini bread from us this year.  Also, since fall is officially here and it has been freezing at night I figured that I should pick all the tomatoes I could get from my plants to salvage anything I could.  I have about ten pounds of green tomatoes sitting on my counter right now just waiting to ripen so that I can freeze those as well.  That's in addition to the five pounds of red tomatoes in my produce drawer.  I also need to figure out what to do with all my cucumbers.  I was going to pickle them, but I don't have enough to do that.  Any suggestions?

Anyways, I've babbled long enough about that so here are a few pics to enjoy.