641 Bottles of Juice on the Wall

Lorna, Todd's sister, came down from Seattle. It was so fun to see some cousins. Karla and Natalie often disappeared and played all weekend long. Natalie is 5 while Karla is only 3 1/2 years old. I am so proud of them. They played a lot better than we thought they would. Now Kylee and Tyler (Tyler being 2 months older than her), but nonetheless, Kylee was saying "Baby buggin' me." Momma Nef decided to come out on Thurday morning and made it in at 2 am on Friday. We loved seeing her and Trevor. We all stayed out at Grandma Cook's house. Todd and I didn't get to bed before 2 am either night. It was nice to laugh and giggle and swap stories and learn more about Lorna's youth. She is more amazing than I ever knew!! How blessed I am to be apart of this family.
Thursday we left all the kids with Lisa Benites (an amazing woman and wonderful friend) and picked apples. We filled the truck and trailer so full the truck stop told us to stop (but we didn't have to because we weren't commercial). Then Friday morning we geared up and made apple juice. Grandpa Cook has a grinder and juicer. The hard part wasn't making the juice. It was canning the juice. I started with the job of putting the apples in the grinder. I then moved to switching the buckets out from under the grinder, pouring them in the juicer, and taking the juice buckets into the other room to be canned. I am very impressed with myself, but I am also very grateful because the Lord made it so my body didn't hurt like usual when I canned. As we finished making apple juice I moved in to help can it. Brent and his children showed up for a while to help as well as Lorna's sister-in-law and her friend. It was a whirlwind of a day!! But we had a lot of fun.
Then Friday morning, we woke up and decided to make grape juice. Grandpa needed to take care of his grapes before they froze, and I knew of a place we could buy some for 20 cents a pound.
I was left to babysit the kids while everyone went into town to get the grapes and other supplies we'd need. While they were gone the kids wanted a snack, and I let them eat the popsicles in Grandma's freezer. Then they wanted the icecream. I finally said the next one to open the freezer was getting spanked! I relayed this story to the adults as they got home. Grandpa said "I'm sure glad I wasn't the next one to open it." The funniest part was watching mom as tomato dribbled down her chin and she tried to breath, laugh, and swallow.
We didn't start canning until 2 pm, but we finished by 10. We then stayed up and had icecream and later on got into Grandma's caulflower. And we joked and laughed and swapped stories. We were tired the next morning though. Sunday we spent the rest of the afternoon sorting everything out!! It was crazy. And I still wonder if I got more than my share...
We were also able to get Wheat that weekend thanks to Bishop Mackey. It felt peaceful moving all this food storage into our little house. I am still trying to find space for it all.
The final numbers were as follows
Apple juice: 266 quarts, 111 2-quart bottles, 1 gallon bottle (along with a lot drunk fresh) for a total of 145 gallons canned.
Grape juice: 92 quarts for Grandpa and 171 quarts for the rest of us: for a total of 263 quarts of grape juice.
And when added all together, we canned 641 bottles of juice in two days!! It was fun.