Millions of peaches...

peaches for free...

Millions of peaches are what it seems like I've canned today. Well, not me by myself. My mother-in-law, my friend, Frank, and my friend, Nej all helped. And thank goodness, because we started a little after 9 this morning. And I just finished washing the last dish, and it's 10 minutes to 9 p.m.

I am exhausted. We started with about 10 bushels of peaches, and we did 124 quarts of sliced peaches, (though we lost four in the cooking process) and we did 40 jars of jam so far. I still have about a bushel left at my house, well, maybe a bushel and a half is more like it. And Nej, Frank, and my MIL all took a bunch home. My MIL took about a bushel with her. With as exhausted as I am, though, I feel such a sense of accomplishment!

We worked hard, even my dh helped, and was SO sweet about it. And he took care of the kids while I worked, too. My ds, Big Red, helped us peel and even squished some of the really soft ripe ones for jam with his hands. He worked with us for a few hours. It was great!

We borrowed the camp stove from my MIL as well, so we could have two burners running outside, which helped a ton. We didn't turn the a/c on until about 4:30 or so, when it was about 77 degrees in the house.

Here's the other awesome thing. 10 bushels of peaches, we picked them off the trees in the church orchard yesterday. And the great thing? They really were free! The church had picked all they needed, and they were begging people to come and glean what was left. It's actually quite a shame, because there are SO many peaches left that they will NEVER be able to use them all.

Another interesting thing about it is, we had a very late frost this year, and there were several stakes that were asked to fast on a certain day for the crop, because the fear was that the frost had killed all the peaches that had started to grow. They were worried about even having enough to fill the needs of the church cannery. And not only were there plenty for that, there were plenty for us to go pick about 10 bushels in about 90 minutes, and there were STILL so many on the trees. It was amazing to see!

So, WHO says Heavenly Father doesn't hear and answer our prayers?