My week

It's been a busy week here, after a little break in canning we're back at it full swing. We canned 14 quarts of sweet cherries, 7 pints of blackberries and 12 quarts of peaches with lots more to do this week. Have I mentioned yet this week how much I love bail lid jars? Well, I really do, I have never, ever had a seal failure with them. Ever. I certainly can't say that about regular bands and lids. Sigh. To can fruit I prepare the fruit as usual: wash, peel, slice or whatever and then I add sugar. I added 1 cup of sugar to 10 cups of sweet cherries, 1 cup sugar to 8 cups peaches, pretty much however sugary you like it. Let sugar coated fruit sit, covered, at room temperature for several hours or overnight and it will get juicy. Place fruit into jars, top off with juice and voila', canned fruit with no added water. When using the canned fruit you can freeze the juice into ice cubes and use them with iced tea for mulberry flavored tea or raspberry or peach. Mmmm. The fruit tastes so much better than fruit canned with water, try my method and I think you'll like it.

An outside shot of the cans to try to demonstrate the richness of the fruit.

Also this week we harvested the garlic. There are a few hundred bulbs, after they dry out a bit I'll braid them. Hopefully Katie will photograph the process and I can blog about it. We really like garlic, it's so good for you.

And today, oh the thrill of it I can hardly write. Today, I got to rewash all of the clothes that I washed yesterday. They got rained on and didn't dry quickly enough so now they stink. In case you might think I'm a big whining baby and should just blog about pertinent topics, I'd like you to know that for the past 3 months I haven't had a washing machine, all of our laundry is done on a washboard and with a scrub brush. Let me expound upon the good points of doing laundry this way.

1. We now do laundry together as a family, usually anyway. The littlest girls can rinse, everybody can hang clothes on the line, we are working together.
2. We are way more careful not to needlessly dirty up garments.
3. The clothes get so much cleaner when scrubbed with a brush than any automatic washer I've ever used.
4. My biceps really got toned up, lol. There is nothing in this world for getting in shape like good, old fashioned manual labor.

Seriously, I try not to bemoan things like this and look on the bright side. I have so much to be thankful for that what's a little trial here and there? Happy Fourth day to you.