A little Gardening and a little Canning, or a lot

Our basil and tomato plants have gone crazy.  The tomato plants are growing all over the garden and in my flower beds, where I didn't plant them.  The basil plants are huge.

So I finally cut the bunches and hung them up to dry in the kitchen.

There is still a lot more out there, so I'm hoping that I can make some fresh pesto with it at some point this summer.

The we went to pick peaches.  We picked 8 pecks, although they were over flowing and falling into the cart so I think it may have been more than that.  We also picked up 3 dozen ears of sweet corn.

I've never found a place to pick pickling cucumbers but we stopped by the farmers market and found these cute small ones so I bought about 16 pounds of them.

And the next morning, we got to work.  Luckily for me, both boys were willing to help out so things went faster than if I'd been working alone.

Unluckily for all of us, the house got over 80 degrees and even after I plugged the portable air conditioner in and set up a fan, we still couldn't get the house cooled off until we were completely done and the sun went down.  So the boys ended up half dressed and the puppies were dying to find a cooler surface to lay on.

But we ended up with 27 quarts of canned peaches.

And 15 jars of pickles (4 were in the canner when I took this picture.)

We froze most of the corn with the food saver and plan to eat the rest this week.

I started to make jelly with the peach pits and peels, but it was just too hot so I put it in the refrigerator and plan to finish that job tomorrow after summer school.

This was shared on the Homesteaders Blog Hop