Avenlea is now almost 4 weeks old and we are learning so much about her everyday. She loves her family already and we are so glad to have her here with us in our new house. Chloe sings to her and Blain likes to turn on her buzzy bouncer to help her be happy. Mommy and Daddy take turns rocking her every evening while watching a movie - she tends to have her fussy time from about 8 to 10 every night. Still we love all the time we get to spend with her and look forward to watching her grow.
The apples are ripe and we have been hard at work preserving those beautiful delicious apples. I looked up some recipes for applesauce, apple pie filling and apple jelly and we have tried all three and canned them as well. It's a lot of work but the apple corer pealer slicer makes it tons faster. That and using the crock pot. I pinned all my recipes so I can find them easier which has been a huge help. So far everything has come out well but I want to write down a couple of things I've learned for next time:
* pack the apples in tight when doing apple pie filling. All my apples floated to the top which they say is safe but just not as pretty as it could be.
* I really need/want a HUGE stock pot for doing large patches. My crock pot full of apples only fills about a pint and a half.
* the lids don't always pop down right away. It took some of them 30 minutes before the seal was all the way there. I thought I was going to half to reprocess some of them but turns out they are all sealed now
* Get half pint jars for the extra apple sauce etc. that just doesn't fill up a quart or pint.
* Make sure to cut out the apple seeds and surrounding hard cases around the seeds because they don't cook down and are hard pieces in the apple sauce
Beautiful Apples from the back tree
Not even half the peelings - but we turned them into apple jelly so I felt good about having no waste
Putting the apples in the crock pot for 7 hours
All I did was stir with a fork! We added about 1/4 cup of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon to this batch.
Yay my first jar of canned applesauce!
Apple pie filling, applesauce so far - about 50 apples in total which also made about another quart and a half of apple sauce that already got eaten :)
I also made butter! We had an extra cup of heavy whipping cream so I tried making butter. I turned out just like real butter (which it is...) I shook a tupperware full of cream for about 30-45 minutes, drained it (we put the buttermilk in our pancake mix!) kneaded it and salted it slightly. We ate it all in 2 days. Learning these homesteading skills has been so fun! I really want to try yogurt when we're done doing all the apple trees.
The babies have been so cute playing together lately. We do Legos (Duplos actually), coloring and play doh every day. We also make up Dora adventures outside, look for bugs under the pine tree, feed apples and grass clippings to the horses, and sing Albuquerque Turkey on the hammock.
The lady who lease our land for her two horses is so sweet to Chloe and Blain and today when she came over to feed/care for them she let Chloe and Blain help. They got to brush the horses as well and watch the vet clean a cut on one of the horse's leg. They loved every minute of it. She taught them the names of the brushes and would explain things to Chloe so she could understand them. Chloe was so proud of herself each time she got a rag or brush for her to use, it was so cute to watch. Blain wanted to brush the horses "all by himself" and wouldn't let daddy help. Avenlea and I had fun watching.
Nate and Blain brushing the mane
Chloe learning to brush the dirt out
Nate and the babies in heaven working with those horses
Blain showing me one of the big brushes
Chloe brushing Magic all by herself
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