Okay, enough with the fruit already

Pshew, I may officially be over picking... well at least for a week or two :)
We hit TWO farms this weekend... Grossen's peach farm, which we will have to watch closely next year, they only have a few days they are open, and their peaches are totally worth it ... so yummy. So yummy in fact that we came home with about 30lbs... no wait, it had to be more than that, what's $32 / .80 per lb... okay 40lbs of peaches. Spent the afternoon (from 3-10) making jam and canning peaches, we only put one batch in the freezer because of space issues. One of these days we will get a second freezer. It's not really fair to say that that whole time was processing peaches, because I had three batches of marionberry jam from two buckets that we picked at Rowell brothers, you know, since the peaches went so quickly (we did get there at 8:30 am). I wanted some more fresh blueberries, and had hopes of getting into the blackberries... probably my best jam last year... seedless, loads more work, but totally satisifying. Anyhow, Blackberries were already done and we had to do some serious hunting for enough Marionberries, but did pretty well in the end... whatever about two buckets worth comes to... maybe 6 lbs? Jam recipes, we just used the suggestions from the Pomona Pectin box(es... took two for the day, and we were perhaps a tad short in the end) with full sugar (2c sugar per 4 c fruit) and for preserved peaches used the Ball Blue Book, just canned 'em in a light syrup.

I'll have to check at home for the official tally but:

40lbs peaches =
a lot left to eat
1 pie
1 frozen pie filling
5 quarts of peaches
5 pints of peaches
5 Pints Peach Jam
5 half Pints Peach Jam

2 buckets of Marionberries=
2 Pints of Jam
7 half-pints of Jam

We didn't seed these (a la Microwave+ sieve + pestal technique from Jar-man Jim last year... though it did make some pretty impressive Jam)

We had about 2/3 of a batch of wild (called sweet-sour) plums from our farm basket so topped the batch off with peaches and ended up with two pints and one half-pint of Wild-plum and peach Jam.

PSHEW.... I was pretty achey by the end of the day.... and jammed out. So happy about all of the happy fruit waiting for me this winter.

Now for tomatoes.