The Big Extras

Despite my silence here in the world of blogging, these days continue to skip along, filled to the brim with (mostly) happy moments and (mostly) routine activities, all part of the fabric of life.  But a few extras, beyond the normal pattern of homemaking, homeschooling, and loving my family, have crept in.  For example...

Yesterday was a big applesauce-making day for us.  Earlier this year when I got two bushels of apples and made 35 quarts of applesauce, I was pleased with that accomplishment, but knew I needed to make more, or else we would run out long before winter did!  Since I knew that my mother-in-law, who is a continually cheerful helper, would be staying with us, I put off getting apples and making sauce until she was here.  Free labor is a good reason to procrastinate!  ;-)

As expected, she was a HUGE help in the process, and it didn't take us long at all to turn two bushels of Yellow Delicious apples into 30 quarts of applesauce--28 canned and 2 frozen.  We even got it all canned or put into the freezer before we needed to leave to go pick up David from his gymnastics class early yesterday afternoon.

I found it curious that the first two bushels of apples we got made 35 quarts of applesauce, but this batch only made 30.  Maybe it's because the boys each ate an apple on the way home from the orchard.  Maybe it's because I chopped up some apples for an apple salad for our supper that night.  Maybe it's because I saved some apples out for us to continue to eat on in the coming days.  But besides those reasons, I think it's because this time I didn't add very much water at all to the pans of apples as they were cooking.  Last time, I forgot how runny it gets with much added water, so I added a little too much.  This time, I was skimpy with the water--and pleased with the consistency of the finished sauce--so maybe that was why the yield was a little lower.

Because this variety of apples is naturally quite sweet, I didn't add any sugar at all to it, which was different than the last batch which used a more tart apple.  Also, I'm curious about the price.  I believe these apples were about $18 a bushel.  To get 30 quarts of applesauce from 2 bushels means each quart cost a little more than a dollar, and that doesn't include the jar lids (or the gas used for canning them, which would be a really minor expense, but still, it's something).  I haven't bought applesauce at the grocery store for so long that I have no idea how much it costs there.  Are we saving money by doing it our way?  I'm really not sure.  I AM sure, however, that by canning our own applesauce, we're receiving many other benefits: 1) it's healthier, 2) it's fresher, 3) we're supporting our local farmers, 4) we're cutting down on the environmental impact of the commercial applesauce enterprise, including transportation to get the applesauce to us, the production of the containers for the applesauce, etc.  Plus, we're working together as a family, having fun, making memories, teaching our children where food really comes from and the hard work needed to prepare it.  All good stuff, and I'm really glad we make and can applesauce and I definitely plan to keep doing it.  But I do wonder if it's cost-effective.  If only we had our own apple trees...  :)

Well, moving right along...  The big extra of today was even better than applesauce.  :)  It was the first time that Josiah got to perform in the Concert Choir (the highest level choir) of the Shenandoah Valley Children's Choir!!!  :)

This fall concert is always a sort of preview of what's coming in the Christmas concert (which David's choir, the Prep Choir, will also perform in); and the second half of the fall concert is done by the youth orchestra.  During the intermission, Josiah came to sit with us, and I snapped this (photographically terrible, but sentimentally great) picture of him sitting between his grandmas...

...and one of Tobin snuggling with Grandpa.

I couldn't resist taking one of Shav, who was doing a little coloring during the intermission.

Every time I see Josiah perform, I think, "I am so proud of him!"  But this time my thoughts were more like, "I AM SO PROUD OF HIM."  You see, this hasn't been the easiest semester for Josiah.  In both choir and violin, he's been bumped up to the next level of performance (with being advanced to the Concert Choir and included in the Junior Strings ensemble), and those jumps have definitely been big ones for him.  His music has been harder to learn, and he's had more of it to be responsible for, and I'm not going to pretend that it's been all easy for him.  But he stuck with it, gritted his teeth sometimes ;-), and learned the music.  I think sometimes in the past, my pride in Josiah was because of what a good fit it (in this case, choir) was for him, and how quickly he was picking it up, and so forth.  But this time, my joy comes from seeing him tackle something difficult--something that, at times, felt really, really HARD--and conquering it.

He's climbing mountains, that bow-tied, plaid-vested boy of mine!