With all the extra goings on, it's taken me a little while to get through the second batch of 3 gunny sacks of apples, but they are now cleared from my kitchen floor!
Leah came by and helped for the day. She is always such a sweet addition to our lives.
She and Michael found a semi-comfortable place to anchor the Apple gadget to and proceeded to knock off about 1/2 of our latest bounty.
With a fan to blow away the flies they got pretty quick at it.
And I ended up inside mostly prepping all the canning stuff. These went mostly to apples in light syrup...
And apple pie filling.
I wish I could say we got it all done, but it actually took us several days to complete the project. Michael went after them with the juicer
These all went toward applesauce. We are currently up to 34 quarts of it. Later on, I'll take some of that and cook it down into apple butter and can that.
I had a problem with my first batch of applesauce yesterday. All the jars overflowed and I had to reprocess them. But the rest went fine.
Michael and I got a special treat yesterday. We went for a visit with some friends of ours who are buyers and sellers of ginseng. We got to participate in seeing what they do, even being able to take part in the sorting.
I've got to tell you, that's a LOT of ginseng, and I can't imagine even being able to find and harvest all that these people do. It was about a refrigerator full, and that's how much they get every single day.
Michael took these with his little camera. They sure came out yellow. That's not the actual color of the room.
Ginseng is closely regulated by the government concerning harvest. The earliest you can harvest a root is if the plant has reached three years of age. This can be told by the rings on the neck of the root. They are VERY slow growing. Some of these roots are barely an inch long.
Their main market is China. So many Chinese buyers come here to inspect and purchase what has been collected. Interesting stories.
Being a fan of classic automobiles, I was not hurting to be working next to this beautiful car.
If you don't want to see a yucky picture, stop reading now!
.
FINALLY got this guy! He's been evading traps for weeks!
You'll never guess what Michael did with him, when I said to take care of it.
He let him go in the woods next to the house...
Well, well, well! Our replacement rooster chick seems to have finally developed his crow this morning!
Tomatoes today. Pears tonight.
~Faith
.
