grapes, walnuts, and apples...

Aside from the stuff that we grew in our garden this year, we've been harvesting other food around the ole' pioneer house. I've been working so hard to get all of this stuff processed and in bottles/bags for winter. I'm starting to feel like the squirrel in our walnut tree... work work work work, gathering nuts for winter.

First came the grapes. The fences surrounding the property here are covered in grape vines! All different types of grapes in a whole variety of colors. For the whole month of September the yard smelled like grapes, it was amazing! I wasn't going to do anything with the grapes because we don't have a juicer and the one we found was $170!?!? (one can buy a lot of grape juice for that amount of money). But our friends had one that they weren't going to be using this fall so we borrowed it.

Oh boy...

Over a two week period of time we filled 102 quart jars with grape juice. INSANE!!! It took forever. Once I had the juicers going on the stove I didn't want to stop until I had all of the juice out of those little grapes, which made for some very late nights.

Sometimes I had to just admit defeat when situations like this happened at 1 AM... it was just time to call it a night and go to bed.

My awesome sister in law's came over during Priesthood session one Saturday night and stayed until 11 PM doing grapes. They picked, washed, and separated while I worked the juicers. Oh... and 14 kids between all of us were playing in the living room the whole time! It was a mad house, but we got so much done. It was so much better to do this with them instead of all by myself.

Trent did help (since this was his idea), but he would usually get it started and then have to go to work and I would finish it up. I was really happy when all of the grapes were finally gone and I was able to de-grape my kitchen! I don't think I will be doing this next year, it was sooooo much work.

There is the most beautiful walnut tree in the back yard that I'm sure is over 100 years old. It is gorgeous, and it makes hundreds of walnuts. They started really dropping a few weeks ago and we have been gathering them up everyday almost.

We have the walnut process down now. We rub the husk off with our shoe on the grass unless they fell off already out of the husk (those are my favorites). Then we crack them and put them on a cookie sheet and roast them in the oven for a bit. Once they cool off we bag them up, easy peasy... right.

Sad thing is... I can't eat walnuts. They give me canker sores if I eat them. So we've been making them for Trent and his family to eat. They are beautiful.

Last but not least, we picked a box of apples from Trent's grandparent's house (because we hadn't had enough craziness I guess) and we made a 8 quarts of apple pie filling. The rest of the apples we dehydrated into apple chips like we did last year. And with that I. am. DONE! None of this trunk full of apples this year. I would like to do something else with my life other than process and can food. I need a break, so we are calling it good with the apples.

*** I realize you may be wondering why on earth our apple pie filling is red. You see, for some reason I have yet to figure out, Trent thinks that apple pie is suppose to be red. I don't know why he thinks that, I'm blaming it on the fact that he is color blind. But every time we make apple pie he sneaks in the red food coloring and dyes it red. And my friends, sometimes you have to pick your battles, am I right? I let him have his red apple pie filling this year, with the agreement that next year they will not be colored, and if they are red there need to be some raspberries in there or something... no more fake dye.

Red apple pie anyone? Does that even look good to you? I don't get it...