Fall Harvest

What a wonderful Saturday!

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home from school Friday, and I picked up a box of doughnuts. This morning, we slept late, and sat around in our jammies eating chocolate doughnuts with "sprinkers" and sipping coffee. Well, I sipped coffee. The toddlers sipped milk sippies.

The air had just a tinge of fall in it today when I went out to mow the grass, so I turned off the air, threw open the windows, and let lovely cool breezes drift through the house. I love it when you can smell the outdoors all through the house.

The best part was when I weeded the garden and found LOTS of ripe tomatoes, and even more green ones on the vines. We are in for a bumper crop. All twelve of my plants are producing well!

I made a date with my sister for next Saturday to start our canning. Every year we make homemade ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and salsa. Actually the last two years I took a break, since I was a baby machine, and didn't have the energy to put in a garden at the new house. This is our first year for the garden at the new house, and our first crop here. I expected it to be a little less than usual as the ground hasn't been built up yet, but it is doing beautifully. I will savor the canning even more having been away from it for awhile. There is nothing more satisfying to me than feeding your family food that you have grown and prepared yourself. It is an art and a feeling that is dying with my grandma's generation, but Sarah and I do our best to keep it going in our family.

I love this part of the year. I love getting to harvest the fruits of the summer, and my labor. We also made a date for mid September to go the apple orchard, where we will buy bushels of apples, peaches, and pears. We will freeze these, so as we go through the winter we can pull them out for pies and treats like baked apples. We'll also make a family favorite-homemade applesauce (it's pink!!)

Now that my babies are a bit older, and I have the freedom, time, and energy to do this again, I feel like I am reclaiming a part of myself I haven't seen for awhile. Hallelujah! I am returning, bit by bit and piece by piece.