HOW ABOUT THEM APPLES?!?!?!
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Our lives have been full of apples for the last two weeks. On Friday the 3rd of November, Brian and I and some of his family members went to a home in Springville to pick apples for bottling. We picked around five or six, maybe seven bushels that afternoon. Then the next day, I went to finish the picking with a friend from down the street. We actually didn't wind up picking any apples...we shook them! Both of us climbed up into the apple trees and shook the branches like crazy. All of the rest of the apples fell onto tarps we had put underneath the trees to catch the apples.
We came back to their house, (the Pate family), and then proceeded to set up everything to do applesauce. Now when I say "Set up everything" I mean EVERYTHING! This family has a reputation for being crazy when it comes to putting up applesauce. We proceeded to set up about 50 feet of table space, at least six or seven camp stoves that yielded fourteen burners, an apple-washing station, a Victoria Strainer, pots and pans, and so on. It was nuts!

We got everything set up and at around 3:30pm we started doing the applesauce. We spent the rest of the day and into the evening cutting, cooking, processing and bottling the apples into applesauce. We started out with only two people, but by around 5 or 6pm, we got some more helpers. Brian was watching Vaughn, so he couldn't be there to help right away. But eventually Brian was able to come and help, and we had around seven or eight people helping at once. By the end of the evening, which was around 9:30 or so, we had finished about 150 quarts of applesauce! And we hadn't even used up half of the apples! I think all-together we got about 14 to 15 bushels of apples. So we agreed to call it quits, and we would meet up again on Monday to finish the rest of the apples.




Monday came way too fast, and we were at it again! But this time there were more people to finish the job. We worked again from the afternoon into the evening, and we were glad when it was all over! I think all together we got well over 230 quarts or so. We still don't have a complete count of all the bottles, but that's pretty close! What a couple of crazy days!

Brian thought we were finished with apples, but he was wrong! I had saved about one-and-a-half bushels of apples to put up for baking.

So on Wednesday, because we both needed a small break, I decided to put up some apple slices. I worked for a good portion of the afternoon and into the evening. I was able to get 21 quarts finished, and I still had half of apples left to do! So the next day I cut more into slices and dried them, and was able to fill a gallon Ziploc bag full of dried apple slices. In this picture it shows the bottled apple slices, the dried apple slices, and a couple of bottles of applesauce.
Brian says he never wants to see another apple again!


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I was happy to have plenty of help from Vaughn while I was finishing up the last of the apples. He really enjoyed getting into the "apple barrel" and picking out his favorite apples to throw. He found a few he really liked, and by the time I got to them to pick them up, he had turned them into applesauce!


I have a somewhat embarrassing story to tell. I tried some of the dried apple slices, and I liked them so much, that I munched on them throughout the day on Thursday and Friday. Needless to say, by late Friday evening I was so sick to my stomach that I had to curl up in a ball on the couch and pray for the Pepto to work! Note to everyone: EAT ONLY A FEW DRIED APPLE SLICES EACH DAY!!!
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Earlier in the week we had planned with the Pates to have a party to celebrate all of our hard work bottling. So we planned to have dinner and a movie on Friday night. So around 6:00pm we went over to their house for dinner. We decided to have a Mexican Fiesta for dinner and then watch Nacho Libre, which happens to by my favorite movie in the entire world now! I love it! Brian and the Pates had never seen it before, so I was very excited for them to see it. Everyone loved it, and we all had a blast together. We of course dressed up in our Mexican wear, including Vaughn.

I do have to add a few photos of Vaughn getting ready for his bath. What a cute bum!!!





































And one more....to illustrate what happens when I get too caught up in bottling, and forget to put Vaughn in his bed for his nap!


Love, Lisa