Canning & Tractoring

I'm a bit behind on these updates.  We haven't done much the last two weekends.  One weekend we bought a tractor and spent a day canning apples & some jam with my sister in law.  The other weekend we went to an out of town wedding and didn't even go to the house.  Here's some pictures:

We bought a John Deere 400 tractor that was made in the late '70s or early '80s which means it has a good (aka fixable) engine (apparently they actually 'don't make 'em like they used to'). We plan on using it for mowing our lawn and plowing our snow, but down the line there are other attachments we could buy to do some other things as well.

This was also the first time I used my trailer hitch!

Fast forward two weeks later and we actually got to use it!  It was very fun, it reminded me of when I went snowmobiling before I could drive:

I plan on doing a whole update on the canning day, including a step by step tutorial and recipes, but that will have to wait for another day. But for now, here is a picture of the fruits of our labor:

We made raspberry jam, cherry jam, applesauce, apple butter, and lots & lots (long story but we actually made a quadruple batch when we only intended to make a double batch...) of apple pie filling. It is all VERY YUMMY! And worth the 3 hour drive home that started at midnight on a worknight...