Tuesday, August 2, 2011

We did some canning this morning.  Jackie Siekbert and her kids came over about 9:00.  Kristine, Jackie, and Naomi all helped me cut things up and get things ready to go in the jars.  The Siekberts let us use their camp stove.  We put it out on the porch.  Joe was the bottle sterilizer and pressure cooker operator.  With team work, we got everything canned by 1:30.  Our green beans did not go as far as we thought, but we will know how many to get next time.  We had more cucumbers than we needed.  We had a couple pickling packets, and that made fourteen jars.  We are trying another method with the cucumbers that were leftover; they had to soak overnight.  The tomatoes here are very small.  We ended up with twelve quart jars and ten pint jars of tomatoes.  We will split everything that we canned today with the Siekberts.  It did save a lot of money; canned goods are quite expensive here.  There were only two jars that did not seal.  So, we sampled a pickle and a bean tonight; they turned out good.  I had watched my mom can, but I had not done it myself before.  With some online instructions, we made it through just fine.

After we finished canning, Joe took the kids swimming.  When they got back home, Bonnie was so tired.  She sat down in Joe's chair and fell fast asleep.  Danny said that he wasn't tired.  He lay down on the couch and was asleep; just as I was going to snap a picture of him, he turned over and said, "I didn't go to sleep, Mom."  

After three attempts to dry the same load of laundry, I told Joe that the dryer was not working right.  He looked at it and discovered that the drum was not turning; the belt was broken.  He said, "At least the dry season is here," because he knew it would take a while to get a belt sent from the States.  During supper, he remembered seeing something in the pantry.  He went and looked, and there was a dryer belt in there that the missionary who lived here before had left.  Joe measured it up against our belt, and it was the exact same size.  He looked up online how to put the belt on, and our dryer is back up and running again.  That was a blessing!  

A demain,

Joe, Laura, Gilbert, Danny, and Bonnie