My Enchanted Musings

My dad and Ladda came to visit for a couple of days. They leave for Thailand on the 22nd of this month and will be gone for 6 months this time. If it was 5 months I'd go with them. But I just can't be gone for 6, it's too long.

That was supposed to be humoruous. When I read back through it I thought to myself, "what if someone thinks you are serious?" haha. I crack myself up sometimes.

I have accomplished a lot in the realm of food preservation in the short two days they have been here. We pruned down our pumpkin patch. Dad showed me how to cut it down so that the energy goes to the biggest pumpkins. We got rid of all the tiny suckers that weren't doing much but suck the life out of the bigger ones. Grow, grow, you are free to get bigger now pumpkins, much, much bigger.

Then the three of us (dad, ladda and I) picked all the green beans. I had so many out there that i haven't had time to pick. I think it drove Ladda nuts to see good food going to waste so like the good woman she is she got a bowl and started picking. Well then I felt guilty because she was out there doing it alone and so I went and helped too. Then she said to me, "tell daddy to come outside." So he did. You have no choice but to listen to Ladda. After they were all picked they got snapped and then canned. But I need to dwell a minute on the word snapped. Does anyone else out there love that sound of beans being snapped? What memories that brings. I remember countless hours, and yes, i'm not kidding when I say hours of sitting and snapping beans when I wanted to be swinging on cedar branches or walking to my friend Tonya's house. child labor I tell you. That's what that was. Hmm....what are my kids doing tomorrow after school?

Those beans turned into 5 quarts and a 2 pints worth of home grown green beans.

Then this morning my dad walks in with an apple he is eating. I quizzicaly ask him if that is perhaps from the apple tree in the back? He confirms that yes, indeed it is. "don't they have worms?"

"No."

"Huh."

About 15 minutes later this is what we had:





And we then did this:






And turned it into this:



8 Quarts of applesauce!


And my girls said with warm applesauce in their spoons, "can we have some tomorrow in our lunch?"

Ah...of course you can.