Applesauce!

With all the apples from out apple-picking trip, we made applesauce. I went over to a friend's house for the day, and we made about 45 quarts of applesauce. Heather had a hand-strainer that we used to make the applesauce. It would've been much more work, but between our 3 older boys, we very rarely had to turn the crank! Here is Carver, taking his turn, while his friend Nathan helps (in all fairness, Heather's two boys did the majority of the hard work!):



While we had two bushels from an orchard, we did have about 1 1/2 bushels that Heather had gotten from a friend's house, and they were organic to the core (ha ha...)! We cut out a ton of bad spots and worm holes, but they sure are interesting looking:


Here's Carver, stirring cinnamon into the big vat of applesauce (Heather's two oldest, Jonathan and Nathan, in the background):


And here are the kids, playing a game together. From left to right: Nathan (5), Josiah (3--adopted from Ethiopia), Ellie, Carver.


And little Laura found something to climb on!


You'll notice that often the girls don't have pants on. Wierd, I know. Usually, I just get to some point in the afternoon, and I'm tired of putting pants back on after diaper changes and potty trips, usually sometime around 3 PM. So that's one way of telling what time of day the pictures are taken :)

The applesauce stats:
2 orchard bushels--1 1/2 Jonathan, 1/2 bushel Cortland
1 1/2 home-grown bushels--random assortment of varieties

We bagged 47 quart-size Ziploc bags for freezing at the end of the day.
Time spent? Who knows, between cooking, cleaning, diaper changing, feeding kids, monitoring fights, and generally trying to keep 7 kids out of the kitchen...somewhere around all day.
Verdict: Totally worth it!