More tomatoes!

This Sunday I had the most tomatoes to process at one time. I had about 18 gallons to put through the juicer. This is what my counter looked like by the time I was finished juicing.



While I am still juicing I start cooking it down to sauce. I had my two big kettles going all morning and finished around 3:00. I got 6 kettles full of juice.

The juice that didn't originally fit into the two kettles I poured into this huge kettle which has the capacity of 4 kettles full of the other size. I don't use this for cooking much as it has such a thin bottom and would scorch easily.

I processed jars in my canner 3 times, not full each time. I usually get 4-5 quarts from 2 kettles full of sauce that I cooked down. I had one jar break the second canner full. That makes such a mess! I ended up with 14 quarts of sauce by the end of the day.

Brandon was home for the weekend and left for Fargo around 4:00. I think it has been harder for me yesterday and today than it was last week probably because he left from home. Last week I left from his place. He was a good help to Tim on Sunday. They took the wood stove chimney down from the roof and cleaned it well. Then they had to lower the wood stove and take the inside stack off and clean it outside. It definitely is a two man job.

Today we are back to school. The next two weeks in geography we are studying about Mexico. The children got their (fake) passports today and we left on an airplane for Mexico. We hit a little turbulence on the way and they really enjoyed that. When we got there I put a Mexican flag sticker on the first page in their passports and we read a couple books about Mexico. It was a good day. Tomorrow we will attempt to make a pinata.

Leah did her ABC puzzle almost by herself. She is great about knowing the names and sounds of the capital letters and writing them. The lower case letters are a little more difficult for her but she did well. Of course Daniel used it as a road for his Lego truck.



Here the children are drawing a desert picture in their nature notebooks. Both drew some great cacti.

For music we are using Wee Sing Around The World. Both children and I are enjoying it more than the patriotic songs we learned last year. While the former were important to learn these are just more fun.

I've got some fry sausage and bow tie noodles cooking. I had better feed my hungry crew.