we found this fuzzy, gray caterpillar on our sidewalk. the kids wanted to keep him as a pet, and since we gave our fish, sharkbait, away when we moved...i figured it would be okay. our fuzzy caterpillar kinda turned into our science project. last night he curled up into a ball, cozied up next to the big leaf, and in the morning, he had spun himself into the chrysalis. the kids have also learned new words like, "metamorphosis." i don't know exactly how long these things take, but isaiah has experience with caterpillars turning into butterflies and he says it takes weeks. good thing he remembers things from kindergarten. i never did anything that cool when i went to kindergarten.
so, the topic at hand. when we moved here, our first sunday at church was great. we had come from a branch that we were struggling to go to and when we attended church here, everyone instantly became family. we didn't know a single person, except for sam's boss and his wife (who had come over with the best homemade bread we've ever eaten). anyway, our church is part of a gardening program that spans the navajo and hopi reservations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (long name, i know), created this program to help the people living on the reservations to learn how to become more self-sufficient and self-sustaining. long story short, we are learning how to go back to our traditional ways of working the land and living off of it in a harmonious way. it's an amazing thing this church is doing for the people here. i also signed up for a box of pears and apples.
a week later, i had a ton of fruit i needed to do something with. i was clueless.
my mom has this massive garden and orchard in her backyard. as kids, we were in charge of weeding. i don't remember much about the rest. we helped her can peaches, jalepenos, apples, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, etc. the thing was, the seven of us siblings were all in an assembly line. i think i was in charge of peeling stuff. my mom took on the massive chore of working with the boiling water - a sacrifice i didn't know to appreciate until now. i asked her questions, she gave me her extra canning supplies, her extra canning jars, everything i could ever need for canning, actually.
i came home. i read the booklets, i read the online blogposts. do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that, or you will get botulism and die.
ack! what did i get myself into?!
if anyone has seen me cook or sew, you will know that i have an extremely hard time following directions and instructions. i dump extra ingredients in, i leave ingredients out, i take shortcuts and don't care to cut along the lines. i skim all the important notes. i began to panic, just a little. my palms were just a tad clammy, probably not the best thing for handling boiling pots of water. this was going to be difficult.
i enlisted helpers.
this handsome guy poured the pear applesauce into the clean jars.
this girl belted out in song and dance as she pulled the stickers off the fruit.
this girl bruised more fruit than was called for, but she got them from the box to the counter, and i guess that's all that matters.
and my most essential helper. he peeled and handled the heavy equipment.
in the end, we had to re-do some of the first batches because after i re-read the instruction manual from beginning to end, i found out i skipped some important steps. ha, typical.
we might've dropped a boiling pot of water in the process, and i might've added way to much cloves to one of the batches of applesauce...oops. but, in the middle of nowhere, who knows when we might need these fruits of our labor. i'm pretty darn proud of myself. it only took 30 something years to get over my fear of canning. lets just hope i don't die of botulism now.
someday, i will be as awesome as my mom, growing pretty things like pumpkins in my backyard.
i'm excited for this pumpkin to metamorph itself into pies.
the end.
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