My Birthday Gift

As most of you know I had a birthday a little over a week ago. Well, my wonderful Son gave me a great gift. He gave me a gift certificate for Amazon.com.  Boy, did I have a great time shopping and spending. And believe me I spent every penny of it on books and DVD's, not one red cent on shipping (I made sure every thing I ordered was available for free Super Saver shipping. I did end up paying $4.52 more, just because I couldn't get my order to the exact amount and didn't want to waste any of it:)
  So anyway here is what I was able to get with the awesome gift.  (Thank you, Christopher, very much. It is much appreciated.)  Now most of the books will be helpful once we get a farm in a dire emergency situation, but I wanted to get a head start. A couple are for personal growth and the DVD's were just for fun.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0800719964/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006OBPZY/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i10

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000056MMM/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i07

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563637502/ref=oh_details_o00_s02_i00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039592622X/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i08

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395988144/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i09

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1885904177/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580178790/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i03

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580173039/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i04

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580172202/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i05

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933392592/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i02

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452296226/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i06

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0891075860/ref=oh_details_o00_s02_i01

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615218997/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i11

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0931432820/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00

 

A Small Look Into Our August

Bread raising

Our tomato plants are doing wonderfully...did I say that they were planted from seeds?!?

Some more of the tomatoes, Ralph picked one already and said it tasted GREAT!!! Ralph has really pampered them.

Etna Beans

The Corn, it is now over 10 feet tall!!

Ralph showed us how to care for tools

Hannah sanding a shovel

Alicia cleaning a crow bar

Enjoying a gift from my Dad, he made this when I was a little girl (a cowboy hat chip and dip ceramic bowl.)Alicia and Daddy playing Checkers, I think Daddy won this one. Alicia is a very good checkers player!Alicia and Mom taking blanched peaches out of the pot, ready to peel and pit themHannah making the extra light syrup for the peachesPeeling the peaches in preparation for canningFilling the jars

It was so nice to be able to can outside, we kept the mess and the heat out of the kitchen. We ended up with 20 quarts of peaches (one jar broke during the processing). What a great start for storing up for the winter. We hope to can enough so we won't need to purchase out of season, over priced fruit during the winter.

Some Canning done for 2008

The girls and I have been working hard the past week. Last week, we canned 14 quarts of peaches and dehydrated 1/2 gallons of peach slices. Peaches are one of the easiest fruits to can. You just blanch them, pull the skins off, cut in half and remove the pit. This week we have canned 21 quarts of pears and have dehydrated over a gallon of pear slices, we also dehydrated 1/2 gallon of banana chips (which we do almost every week, we really like banana chips). Pears are a little more work than peaches. You can't blanch them, so you have to peel them, slice them and then core them. We have had lots of fun. The girls are learning a lot and should be able to get their badges for canning and dehydrating for Keepers of the Faith. Below are a few photos that Alicia took of our canning. Isn't she becoming quite a good photographer!?! The end of this month we will be getting four boxes of apples. We can't wait, applesauce, apple butter, sliced apples and dried apples. My mouth is watering already!!!

Here is one of our two boxes of peaches

Time to halve those peaches

Watching for the pot to boil (you know what they say about that:)

Here is one of the batches of finished peaches

Pears are a little more work, peeling, coring and slicing, but are they worth it!

Hannah hard at work preparing the pears for canning

Some of our finished pears

Canning

Here are some good tips for canning and as an added bonus a great recipe.