the art of canning

 This is our first year ever we have canned.

Scott was WAY more into it than I was.

We just ended last week and I am glad and relieved that the sticky mess is gone,

But am so glad when I look in my pantry and see our stock pile!

 We started first doing the tomatoes from our garden,

I love these and now I have these for stewed tomatoes recipes

or I can make my own fresh spaghetti sauce!

Then we juiced our own grapes from our grapevines in our back yard.

We were lucky to have one huge vine of each variety:

black, red, and green grapes!

We got over 50 jars total of juice, it's amazingly delicious and SO different from

 the juice you buy in the store.

 We also did some pickled veggies, plums from our tree in the backyard,

applesauce, apple juice, pears and pear sauce.

 We went to the church orchard and picked up a bunch of apples for the apple sauce, and from that we made apple butter and cinnamon sweet apples.

 

We bought a dehydrator so we could

dry some of our fruit.

We dried plums and grapes to make prunes and raisins.
Delicious! 

 I made some fruit leather for the kids,

 since Cole is practically addicted to fruit roll-ups.

They're healthy, easy to make, and delicious. Plus he can eat as much as he wants!!

I made some strawberry-lemon and strawberry-peach freezer jam with my sister in law a week ago. I got about 27 jars and it is the best thing in the world.

I love it and my family loves it! Almost finished with the first jar :)