"There are two seasons at our house. . ."

The past two weeks along with our family reunion we have been busy with the beginning of canning season.  Mady told me "There are two seasons at our house, canning and non-canning."  I guess she is right because I got out the canning tools last week and the apricots are ready!  Our neighbor has a large apricot tree that was ready for picking when we got back from girls camp so we picked it clean on Saturday, but I wasn't able to get to them until the Wednesday before we went to our family reunion.  It was a marathon canning day.  We made apricot everything!!  I started with bottling 29 quarts of apricots because our home teacher brought me two more boxes in addition to the 3 buckets I already had.  Then we started on jam, syrup and leather.  It took us all day but we were able to knock out 42 pints of jam, 24 bottles of syrup, and 7 trays of leather.  Whew!  I couldn't have done it without everyones help!!  (And I wish I had pictures to show you!)

14 quarts of peaches from yesterday, 12 of the bottles of syrup, and
two of the boxes of jam.  I had put away the others before I thought to
take a picture of last weeks work.

This week I ordered two boxes of California peaches from Bountiful baskets and yesterday I got them bottled.  I only got 14 quarts out of two boxes because everyone kept eating them fresh.  They are the first of the season and they were so sweet and juicy .  I'm amazed I got the fourteen quarts!  Last year my mom and I did 120 quarts of peaches and they are almost gone.  Austin and Cody like to eat them right out of the jar, and save the juice for Doug.  They are great at eating them, and working on being great at the canning then.

And so it begins, according to Mady, the canning season. . .  . . .