Harvest Time

The first weeks of September we put in a lot of time doing our annual harvesting and "putting up"  of various and sundry things. This year it also coincided with school starting as well as company and traveling. Made for some crazy days but my secret is to stay up all night one night a week. Its like having an extra day with no children...the only limitation being I can't accomplish anything too noisy.  Don't worry. I never run out of things needing to be done...even quiet things. I've found that as long as I get 3hrs of sleep before the kids wake up I am good for the day. I can send Mr. Wise Guy off to work at quarter after 5 and sleep until 8:30 when its time to get the kids going for school.(at least I don't like to get started with school later than 9, and usually earlier than that is preferable to ensure we're done before lunch.)

After returning from a fabulous trip to the beach (with family) for the better part of a week, as well as attending the fabulous wedding of Micah & Daniela, during which time I left my camera at home (probably due to packing during the wee sma's of the morning) I spent a day blackberry picking at the Munck Farm.  It was HOT and sunny. Gwen was very gracious and let the kids spend a lot of time in the house where it was cooler... after they wore out the battery on my Tablet and finished their picnic lunch.

 Half way done with the picking and I'm still looking semi-cool...I WASN'T feeling it though. :)

After picking 3 of these giant bowls we finally left Gwen in peace with our 40lbs of berries in tow along with a bunch of raspberries that were added to the loot.  Hooray! Then to spend a day making jam and jelly.  I think we got about 8 batches of jelly done the next day, along with canning a batch of green beans from the garden.

Sitting around the kitchen table in the evening snapping beans together is always fun and relaxing. :)

 Aubrey keeps it interesting! :)

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

 The kids like to use their scissors to snip and tail the beans. Makes it more of a novelty. :)

 The two eldest were actually napping when I was running this particular batch of beans and Aubrey had already awakened from her nap so she helped me pack jars. 2 yr olds are pretty good at it...

 And they find it very entertaining. :)

Found out that Sat. evening that we would be having company Sun-Tues and the house was in a pitiful state. Like, it needed some serious help...so I pulled another all-nighter. ;) We were to start school Tues., as well, and I was still trying to get everything set up for that. We did have company and we did start school, and it all turned out well.  We were all pretty tired for the first week of school though.