Canning

We have been canning crazies since Labor Day weekend and I am happy to say - I am FINALLY DONE!!!!!! We started with 530-ish ounces of strawberry freezer jam. (40lbs of strawberries) It was a lot of work, but Mike, Kevin and the girls all helped. And what is canning without a little Power Tunes! This is the only picture I took with my camera.

I should really go count how many quarts we ended up canning, but I am on a roll with all these posts so I can't stop or I might not make it back. We canned around 50 quarts of peaches, 29 of pears, 50+ of pear syrup and 4 batches of fruit leather. I wanted to do a lot of syrup - but wasn't planning on quite that much. It has been a crazy week and when I finally got to my fruit, syrup was our choice because the fruit was too ripe. But we really like it and it isn't near as much work. And the best part - we are DONE! YAY! My girls have been great helpers. They love to run the strainer and can do it without any help so I can keep ahead of them washing and cutting fruit. We always made fun of my mom that she would always say how much faster it was with our help - and now I say that to my girls too. Mostly in honor of her. But it IS lots faster with their help! I didn't get pictures of them helping this year with the canning - but Melinda did so I will have to get them from her and attach to this post.