SHHHHH!!!! It's sleeping!!!!

No, I'm not talking about the baby...I'm talking about the canning stove!

See how peaceful it looks just resting so comfortably! Now, please, please, read this post very, very quietly and DO NOT wake it up! It took me so long to get it to finally go to sleep!

I bought two bushels of apples last week that my good friend Jennifer so generously delivered to our door. Since then I have been peeling, coreing, slicing, drying and canning apples. And eating. The kids are getting tired of the same old answer to their pleas of "Can I have a snack?" "The apples are in the garage...help yourself!"

Here's the process, so wonderfully documented in pictures by my eldest boy:

First, put the apple on the wonderful peeler, corer, slicer thingy.

Then, spin it a few times.
And finally, put them on the trays for drying.
A few hours later we have wonderful, delicious dried apples! (I don't have a picture because we ate them too fast...17 apples consumed by 4 people in one weekend). After two or three dryers-full that got eaten as fast as they were made, I got smart and started putting them directly into bags into the freezer to save for the winter. Or at least until next week.

I used the same process (minus the drying) to cut up the apples and then canned them with some sugary, cinamonny yummy sauce to use later in pies, crisps, on top of ice cream, whatever.

I ended up with 14 quarts of apple pie filling and now I am officially DONE canning until next year! Whew!

Here is some of the summer's bounty saved up for the winter days.

And here is the freezer:Some of what we have stored are:

• Apples (sauce, pie filling, dried)
• Blueberries (frozen, dried)
• Strawberries (frozen)
• Mulberries (frozen)
• Rhubarb (frozen)
• Pesto
• Corn
• Tomatoes (dried, sauce, whole, diced, mild salsa, cilantro salsa, and Shannon's Smokin' Salsa, bruchetta)
• Pickles (dill, quick sweet, 14 day sweet, bread and butter)
• Beets (pickled)
• Green beans (an entire story in itself)
• Peaches (jam, sliced)
• Apricots (jam, sliced)
• Peppers (frozen)
• Red beans (still dry)

OK, so I just exhausted myself thinking about all that work. I'm just hoping that canning stove takes a really, really long nap! I'm sure I'll be looking forward to seeing it again next summer!

Laundry musings

I just brought in the diapers I washed today. It was a gorgeous, sunny fall day...perfect for drying diapers on the line. And yes, it is Sunday. I figure God will forgive me for doing work on "the Lord's day" if it means helping the environment!


Of all the household chores that I do during a week, my absolute favorite, by far, is hanging out laundry! There is something about taking out all those clean, wet clothes and putting them on the line knowing that the sun and wind will do the rest.





However, of all the household chores that I do during a week, my least favorite, by far, is bringing in and putting away laundry. Yes, I would rather clean the toilet than bring in laundry and put it away. It is just so tedious, sorting out the socks and underwear, putting that wash rags in the kitchen, the towels and washclothes in the linen closet and the rags in the laundry room. AHHHH! Just thinking about all that sorting and putting away makes me crazy.



I do own a dryer. I use it in December, January and February when the high temperature of the day is not going to reach 40 for several days in a row. I also use it for emergencies (read: sick children in the middle of the night). I also occasionally use it as a "lazy" way to iron clothes...just put a wet cloth in with the wrinkled shirt for a couple of minutes and it comes out great!



I am very thankful I have a dryer.



However, I try to make a committment to myself to hang out all my laundry whenever possible. That means that if I am busy for several days in a row, or if there is rain or other unusual circumstances, I have to work very hard to catch up on the days I am home and the weather is nice. That means that in the last 4 days I have done 11 loads of laundry. This did not include any sheets or unusual items. I washed as much as my laundry lines hold (6 lines, each approximately 20 feet long) each day for 4 days straight. Ok, the lines are each exactly 23 feet long, my loving husband just went out to measure them. And just so you don't call me a liar (I know you were thinking about it!), the above picture was taken in March, 2007, of our OLD laundry line before my loving husband put in a new laundry line with the above mentioned measurements. And the clothes hanging were the baby clothes being washed and dried in anticipation for our newborn who would be born the next month.

A while back a friend told me that the dryer's have no "effeciency" rating when it comes to electrical use because there is nothing "effecient" about a dryer. I don't know if this is really true (I kind of doubt it), but it did make me think. There is nothing a dryer does that would not happen naturally. The same thing is true of drying hair with a blowdryer. If you are using a dryer simply to make your hair dry (as opposed to using it as a hair-styling tool), it is completely ineffecient. It takes my hair about 3 hours to fully dry on its own. I try to plan my hair washing at a time of the day that I know I will have time for it to dry before I must go out, or the night before. I do use a hairdryer occasionally, especially on very cold days, but I do try to limit it.

And since I am on the topic of drying things, what about using papertowels to dry our hands after washing them in a public bathroom. I mean, really, how long does it take for the water to naturally evaporate off our hands? I do use a papertowel when I am carrying something with me that I need to pick up and not get wet, such as a book or paper, but I try to think about it prior to automatically pulling out another paper towel and then putting it in the waste basket to be taken to the dump.

Before you think me to be "holier than thou," however, let me tell you that I have a car that I use, even for trips to the grocery store that is less than 1/2 mile away, when I take a shower, I turn the water on really hot and just stand there for a while (like my own personal sauna), and every day I make other choices that are not so good for our world. So, I guess hanging out the laundry is just one way to make up for what I don't do to help the environment.

There's always room for improvement!