Hey Don in Arizona....have you been affected by that bad weather that hit there the last few days...saw about in on CNN? And your story about picking all those apples and having to prepare them sounds overwhelming. You can tell that I have been away from the wood stove for tooooo long!! When we lived on our farm in the 1960's my mama canned everything...jams, jellies, the works. One time, someone came in stole all of her blackberry jam - that's all they took! She still talks about it to this day. She wondered why they only took the blackberry jam. It was the blackberry burgler! We kept looking for blackberry stains on the clothes of our neighbors, etc. and nary a one of them had a stain...so must have been somebody that had heard how good her jams were! That ended my blackberry jam cake baking for that season. And those peaches...ummmm, so good! Does anybody have a good recipe for peach kuchen? Wondering if Ontelauntee (spelling) Orchards is still in Berks County. We used to buy a lot of fruit there. Sheila in WV --------------------------------- Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online.

Sheila, we were not affected by the bad weather. We are in our monsoon season and have had plenty of rain. Tucson, on the other hand, which is about a 75 mile drive from here, has had extensive damage, flooding, and power outages. We did have some damage to our church, but it does look like it will be easy to repair. When we picked all those apples, I had only canned corn and green beans, and a lot less than we had in apples. It is more expensive to can your own fruits and vegetables than buy the ones already canned, but home-canned food is much better tasting and more healthy. The year we did the apples we also did about 40 pounds of peaches. I think our daughters got most of them. My wife does not eat a lot of vegetables, but I do. For the last three years I have been pastor of a small church that distributes food every Friday. I get all the fresh vegetables and fruits I can use in a weeks time, so I don't worry about canning much now. The nice thing too, is that the food is free. Don