Preservations

Juuuusst in case you were wondering where I've been or what I've been up to...this should answer your questions.  Preservation continues this week with fruit!  I've canned 9 quarts of pears, 9 quarts of sliced apples, 6 quarts of applesauce and 6 pints of apple butter this week.  Still have about 15 pounds of apples left from the 50 I bought recently, and I'm not sure what I will do with those just yet.  I would like to dry some, I think, for addition to granolas this winter.

Again, I am amazed that my grandmother did this for all 6 of her family members for many years.  This is the first year I've tried to get as much put by as possible, and it's been a tremendous amount of work.  But, my whizbang apple peeler sure made the apples much easier!  I've owned it for years, but never really used it much because I thought it took off too much of the apple with the peel, and didn't peel it thoroughly enough.  Well, that's because I didn't have it adjusted correctly!  I found a site online with some suggestions of how to deal with those problems, got 'er all adjusted and bang! had 20 pounds of apples peeled, cored and sliced in no time.  Love that little labor saver!  And probably my favorite part is that it's manually operated.  No power failure can make that stop working, my favorite kind of "appliance".

How about you?  How's your preservation efforts coming along?  Getting your larder stocked up?  Autumn is the time to learn from the squirrels!

Wishing you a store of your own acorns, ~Peacemom