Prickly Pear Jelly making

Our yard is filled with Prickly Pear Cactus which has fruit that is good for making jelly (among other things).  We were so excited to hear that some friends of ours make the jelly every year.  They were willing to change their plans a bit and come to our house to pick our fruit and make jelly at our house!

It was great to look out and see all of the kids and dads picking fruit.  They got it all picked, sorted and washed.

Overall we had very few cactus injuries considering the number of children (17) and the large amount of cactus they were interacting with.  However there were a few incidents and it seems that Mr. Harder was the go-to-guy when the kids could not get them out themselves.

Once we got the fruit inside we got into a good routine for juicing and cooking it up.  Mr. M was thrilled to get to smash, squish and juice the fruit along side one of the dads.  Miss E came in to help a bit with the cooking too.

This was an all day job.  The bigger kids had a blast playing outside for most of the morning.

*These two are quite the pair.  I think they would have stayed outside all day if we would have let them.

 

The younger ones stayed inside and played.

After lunch we set up the big screen to give the kids some down time and keep them out of the heat of the day.

*Why yes, the boys are interacting with the movie!  Swiss Family Robinson was chosen and the boys were contented to sit for a bit since they were able to do some target practice with the animals in the movie.


Babies slept, munched on nums, and hung out.

 

It was a long but fun day.  By the end of the day we had had a couple boil overs and spills.  Those led to very small flames and some smoke.  Since it was really just smoke we had some fun with it and the resident fireman.

 

The fruits of our labors.

Thank you to the "B" and "W" families for coming over, doing all of the hard work, and teaching us how to do this!  We had a great time!