Apple of my eye

My Sister had an apple tree I've had my eye on all summer. It seemed such a shame to have all the apples fall to the ground and rot especially since my kiddos love applesauce and I'm too cheap to buy that watered-down, sugar-laden, apple flavored garbage they label "applesauce" at the grocery store. So after checking with her neighbors my sister informed me the apples were there for the picking. Huzzah!

First there was the picking. We got twelve containers in two hours.

We invested in this nifty picker. The kids couldn't get enough.

He loved chomping on the apples. Unfortunately he did not know what to do with all the apple bits in his mouth so he chomped and chomped until his mouth could hold no more and then he vomited. So that happened.

Per usual Steve is smiling in the picture, but not in real life. He hates when I drag him along to participate in self reliance activities, but points for the hubby because he does it anyway.

There were still tons of apples in that tree.

Then there was the canning.

And more canning.

A neighbor cooked us dinner and fed our kiddos at her house so we could keep working. That earned her a case of applesauce and pie filling. Thank you for being so thoughtful!

And more canning.

Official taste tester.

The look of a man who is soooooo tired of his wife's annual food preservation marathons.

So grateful when I came to the end of the apples because it is hard to do with children (and a husband) who want me to feed them three meals, plus snacks a day. In fact it is hard to do anything, but apples. In the end, we canned 142 pints of applesauce, 57 quarts of apple juice, 12 half pints of apple butter, 10 frozen apple pie fillings, and kept three buckets of apples to eat. Soooooo...I'm grateful for apples. And I'm grateful I'm done. Thanks Sister for letting us have them and helping!