The Five Seasons

Depending on the location of your home the number of seasons you experience varies. Utah you see about two winter and summer. In Washington you also have two rainy and rainy. The east coast you get four with winter, spring, summer and fall. Here at the Fruth household we have Five. Winter, Spring, Summer, Canning, Fall.

So far this season I have done:

60+ jars of salsa

50+ quarts of green beans

25 quarts of diced tomatoes

5 quarts and 1 pint of tomato juice

7 pints tomato sauce

2 pints nectarines

We still have so much more to go.

Here are some pictures of our most recent session last Monday (the 23rd)

Start with some tomatoes

add two cute and anxious helpers

Here the girls are washing the tomatoes

(I love Meghan's face)

Meghan is in charge of squishing the juice out of the tomatoes


she needed a little assistance...



lots of clean jars

Tomatoes in the water bath on left, green beans in the pressure canner on right back and tomato juice in the front pot plus sauce in the crock pot off to the right. It was a busy day.

This wasn't all of it but that day I canned from 7:30 in the morning until 10:30 that night with breaks for annoying things like eating having to stop to go pick up Brock from work. On days like these I understand why my mom had us eat cereal or bologna sandwiches for dinner a lot during canning season. It was crazy trying to cook too.

All in all that day we did 14 quarts of Green Beans, 7 quarts of diced tomatoes, the juice, sauce and nectarines. Monday's usually are my most productive days of the week. Besides the canning I switched Meghan's clothes from 18 months to 2T, Emily and I washed the bay window inside and out, I put away the 4 loads of laundry that had been folded and not put way last week, cleaned and vacuumed the living room, and went to the tin caps game for family home evening. I even managed to play with my kids a bit.

This salsa was from the Saturday before.