Apricots

This spring Myron cut down our cherry tree, but decided to give our apricot tree one more year. It spite of snow and cold we did get a fairly good crop. So Myron wanted me to bottle some apricots. So here are my seven quarts.

Actually, this is so I can just remember all the canning we used to do. When we lived in Fairfield, Calif. I used to bottle about 120 quarts of apricots each year. I also bottled cherries, peaches and sometimes pears. My theory was that the Lord sent cherries first because they were so easy to prepare - just wash and stem. Then came apricots which just had to be pitted. Next came peaches which had to be pealed and pitted. Last came pears which were harder to peal and pit.

I believed in shared labor. So all the children got to help with pealing, pitting and whatever. Sometimes even their friends joined in. With pears we would have contests to see who could get the longest peal.

Jared was born the 26 of May, so that year I decided to forget canning. I still remember Lorna telling me that we had to can apricot and that everyone would help. So they all helped, and we had our apricots. It was great because we just put the canned apricots in the blender and had our own baby food.

Then when we moved into this house we had a nice apricot tree in our back yard. Now we made fruit leather. One year I assigned Jared to make the fruit leather since I was working and did not have time. He and his friend Curtis made lots of fruit leather. The funny thing was as soon as a batch was done they ate part of it. They said they liked the leather better than just plain apricots.