Lots

As in a large amount of things.  I was going to do this post a week or more ago.  After the Friday when I made lots of jam.  Probably the most jam I've made in a day.  Eight different kinds.  Which made about 80  jars of various sizes, which would have been 90+ cups.  Days like that I think, wow, imagine if I could do this every day....

 For some reason my back wasn't complaining like it usually starts to do, and I guess I was just of the mindset that I was going to get it done.  It probably didn't hurt that I had a good book to read while I was doing some of the stirring.

Since I've taken so long to do this post, I have another 'lots' to add.  I`ll stick it here since it relates to the jam. We made a flying trip to Oliver last week.  Left Tuesday evening, to avoid driving in the heat. When you are driving in a non-airconditioned car with three dogs, you have to pick your travelling times.  It wasn't too bad, but we hit the Keremeos valley around 9pm, and it was very warm there.  Some of the fruit stands were still open, so we stopped at our favourite one that has a special table where they put 'jammers', as they call them.  Got 30 lbs of peaches there, and then stopped at another stand and got 8 lbs of apricots.  Once we went over the Richter Pass and dropped down into Osoyoos, it was actually a bit cooler, which was surprising, as Osoyoos can be one of the hottest places in Canada.  Anyway, the next day we drove from Oliver up the highway a few miles and scored on cherries, peaches and apricots.  All 220 lbs of them.  This picture isn't including the 38 lbs we got the night before.

Paid between 40 and 60 cents a pound for all of them.  We spent the rest of that day in the air conditioning (the outside temperature hit 40 C, 104 F that day) processing that fruit for the freezer.  We did take one break in the afternoon to dunk ourselves and the dogs in the lake.  The apricots are easy to do, the peaches a bit harder because you have to blanch them first to get the skins off.  The cherries are really just the pits to do, really:(  We had two hand pitters, one is good, the other one we gave up on.  Cherry juice splatters every where.  We ended up having to bring 100 lbs of fruit back with us, to deal with here, including 30 lbs of cherries.  I got smart here at home and covered a lot of things up with tea towels before we started, so I didn't have to move a lot of stuff, or wipe it all off after.  I looked in the mirror after finishing the cherries, and I looked like I had chicken pox.  Cherry juice splattered all over my chest and up my neck and under my chin (I was wearing an apron). Some of the apricots weren't ripe enough, so a few of those to do today.

And the other 'lots'are these.

The new hens are in full lay.  Their eggs are rapidly increasing to full size.  They have been out in the whole field for a few weeks now.  Every previous Sunday market we have sold out of eggs early, and lots of our regular customers weren't able to get eggs, even when we took 30 dozen. We didn't even have a sign up that we had eggs for sale, enough people just know.  Remember how I have talked before about the supply and demand for eggs, and how often the supply and the demand don't match up.  Yesterday we took 40 dozen eggs, thinking that this time probably we would have enough for everyone.  Well wouldn't you know it, this was the first slow egg day at the market.  We even put our signs out, and were only able to sell 24 dozen.  Weird.  Thankfully I am going to Abbotsford's farmers market this coming Saturday, so will have that extra option for sales.  Hopefully this is just a blip in the egg business, but when you are getting 8 dozen a day, they fill up the fridge pretty fast.