Pumpkins and Jam.

This was the first year that none of our pumpkins were stolen!  We have lived in this house for 6 Halloweens and I was shocked when I realized all 5 pumpkins were still present on our porch November 1st.  Maybe it was that we had the trees out front cut down.  Maybe it was the campaign signs in the yard.  Maybe it was just luck.  Anyway, I decided today that we needed to compost our pumpkins. Halloween is past and I didn't want to have to deal with rotten pumpkins, they were still in pretty good shape.  It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day, so I let Noah stand on the porch stairs and throw the pumpkins onto the sidewalk. It was so much fun to smash those pumpkins and Noah's laughter could be heard down the block. I wish I would have had the camera!  He had to take the big one up a couple times to get it to break up. I made sure that he understood why we were smashing them.  I want him to understand about other people's property and that the only reason we did smash them was because we needed them to fit in the wagon to then fit in the composter.  He also helped me pull some annuals that had been hit hard by the frost and trim back some perennials.

What else did I do today... I finally made some raspberry/strawberry jam!  Over the summer, I begged my mom to pick some raspberries for me from my Baba's house.  I had already picked and made one batch of jam earlier, but I couldn't get back down there to pick more with the kids in tow.  I think we were getting ready to go out of town.  Our last trip with the BTG.  Anyway, Mom picked me a bunch only to have Pap whiz by on the tractor as he was mowing and blow grass all into the container.  Mom was great and picked most of the grass out and then froze the berries for me.  So for the past couple months on my To Do list on the fridge it has said "make jam".  Today I told Brian I just needed to do it!  And I did.  2 1/2 hours, 2 pouches of fruit pectin, 14 cups of sugar, 3 cups of raspberry puree and 5 cups of strawberries (I picked at Polluck's in June) yielded 18 jam jars!  Plus a little more.

I love strawberry jam, but adding raspberries to it makes it so much better!  It took 2 1/2 hours because I had to stop in between batches to help make dinner and eat.  Luckily I had 2 pizza shells in the freezer that I had made a couple weeks ago.  I also had pizza sauce I made with our tomatoes from our garden in the freezer and enough fresh cheese.  Brian whipped up a salad to go along and it made a great supper!