Half a Bushel of Happiness

Today was Half Bushel day!  My daughter and I started the morning off by picking a half bushel of peaches.  The picking was really tough.  The trees only had a few peaches here and there and some were WAY too ripe and others were still rock hard.  It took a long time to pick enough to get our half bushel basket full.  We then picked a half of a bushel of Gala apples.  After our peach expedition -the apple picking was a breeze. The trees were totally loaded and we didn't even have to move before our basket was overflowing.  To continue with the Half Bushel theme we actually picked an exact half bushel of zucchini and eggplant and then picked a half bushel of tomatoes.  No more. No less.  That is all there was.  The tomatoes are just starting to ripen now and it won't be long before we are swimming in tomatoes.  I am hopeful that Labor Day weekend will be tomatofull!  I need to can at least 104 quarts of tomatoes to get us through the year so I should be peeling tomatoes for the entire 3 day weekend. It is always a ton of work but I LOVE TOMATOES!  So the work is well worth it.  After my daughter and I were finished picking all our garden goodies, we treated ourselves to the best sandwich of the summer...........White Squishy Bread, Miracle Whip and Fresh sliced tomatoes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!  Lunch couldn't have been better.  Every bite was full of sun-ripened juicy deliciousness!  Once our bellies were full we got busy processing our half bushels of goodness.  We processed half of the peaches and ended up with a gallon of sliced peaches to put away for the winter. We then sliced all the eggplant and zucchini and a lot of the tomatoes and roasted them all. The house smells heavenly.  Hopefully when the vegetables are done cooking, we will have a few gallon ziplock bags full of roasted veggies for the freezer!  Even though my daughter and I have crinkly wrinkly fingers from all the peeling and chopping, we are happy.  It was a day well spent and we will all enjoy the hard work later!  I am hopeful that tonight we can watch a movie with our doggies and just sit and relax. Maybe we should pop some homegrown popcorn into our half bushel basket and enjoy!  I am kind of thinking we deserve it!!!