phew … long day … again … thank god the days are getting shorter … otherwise we would probably be working even more hours.

food preservation is an intense and focused effort … much produce is needed simultaneously … so there is a sudden wave of work that can’t be put off … otherwise the produce will spoil. We are so looking forward to repeating this next year with food from our own garden!

this morning we started off slowly and agreed to keep it a light and easy day … yeah right!!!

We focused on apples … started with fresh picking … which was the easiest part. If you count all the apples I’ve eaten in my life … it doesn’t come close to the number that I peeled today.  The skin on my index finger is literally warn off from pressing against the peeler … but anyways we ended up with almost 20 liters of lovely sweet apple compote and 7+ jars of apple jam. I think tomorrow we will round the apple theme off by making some apple juice concentrate (we don’t have the tools yet to crush and press apples for cider … maybe next year).

The ducks and chickens were great help in collecting and eating the apple remainders … though they couldn’t put a dent in the quantity we had … so three buckets of leftovers went to the neighbors for their pigs.

We ended the day by hopping over to another neighbor where we loaded the car again with much goods (freshly picked for us today!) mostly carrots and peppers. Tomorrow we expect to pick up from our next door neighbor onions and another big load of tomatoes for more tomato sauce!

We are learning the ins-and-outs of cooking-based preservation … many subtle details to improve on … hope to collect them in an orderly way and publish them soon … many little things that nobody told us and I wish they had!