Sauce, Cider, Jelly and Pie: We have been hard at work preserving our apples for the last 2 weekends. We picked our fist batch on Saturday September 19th. The apples are still a little tart so we are going to do all the pie fill first since tart apples are still tasty in that.
Avenlea posing with a jar of pie filling - "heavy" is all she would say about it. We still have 7 jars leftover from 2 years ago and I just canned 15 jars, I need to/am going to keep better records this year so we know just how much we need in the future. We are planning on doing 2 jars per month for a two year time frame, or 45 jars since a double batch of the sauce makes 15 quarts.
*Keep the clean jars in the oven on 350 for 10 minutes to sterilize then TURN OFF THE OVEN!! I tried keeping the jars in the oven on 200 but cracked a jar because it was too hot even for the warm pie fill. The jars still stayed warm even after the oven was off.
*I used a slotted spoon to fill the jars and got a good ratio of sauce to apples without having to add more sauce
*Scoop out a little of the boiling canning water to put the lids into before filling the jars - this got them soft enough - I've only had one jar not seal and I think that was because I didn't fill it up enough.
*I used wide mouth quarts for the pie fill - this leaves enough space for the pie fill to expand when I fill up to the start of the mouth (about an inch). I seem to remember the regular mouth ones spilling over more, plus it's easier to dump out
*The grinder juicer for making cider was a little bit of a disaster. The juice auger got clogged and the juice backed up spilling all over the counter - the cores and peels clogged up the holes after about 10 apples went through. Nate wants to try again without the cores to see if that will work better. I want to just use the juicer but Nate isn't a super big fan of the juice from the juicer. Anyways, I think I foresee a cider press being built in our future.
*I started with a gallon of jelly scrap juice, added 2 cups of sugar and boiled for about 2 hours before it was jelly consistency. I got 4.5 pints after it was ready so it really reduces down. But I got a good consistency which I was really proud of, especially since I didn't add any pectin!
Blain and Avenlea helping pick apples - aka sitting down after picking one to eat :)
Chloe my good helper - she picked a couple buckets full of apples, handed them to me as I quartered them for sauce and cider, and helped me grind the apples for cider.
In other farmy news... we have a new layer!! I found 6 little eggs in a nesting box in the first coop about 3 days ago. She has laid 2 more eggs since then and is still laying in the same box. I took 4 of the 6 eggs and plan on leaving about that many in the nest so she will keep laying there. I have no idea which chicken it is despite my best efforts to catch her laying. Hooray for more eggs!
Cute Kiddos: My babies have been playing really well together and are still in love with Zeyta. Here are a couple cute pictures - I just wish I had any sort of decent camera. I've been using my ipad and the quality inside is awful, but I'll take what I can get :)
I was laying down next to Zeyta to try and get her to go to sleep. Well Blain comes in and lays down behind me and falls asleep! He has been going through a growth spurt - I know because I don't have to nag at him to get him to eat his dinner and he asks for seconds on cereal and lunch. After Zeyta woke up I snapped this picture of my big 4 year old napping nest to his non napping 3 month old sister. What a sweetie.
Chloe loves to make a baby voice and pretend to be Zeyta saying silly things - asking to zip line, hike, go to the north pole...
Cutie pie in a new dress from Grammy
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