Just as last year, the kids went out and picked the fruit. We are blessed (?) to have a bunch of prickly pear cactus growing in our yard; way more than we need to make our jelly. Then the dads went about the job of cleaning (and more importantly) getting all of the spines off of the fruit.
Last year the dads did the juicing too. This year we realized that we really should be making use of our large workforce. All of the big kids jumped into the juicing, to the point that we had to have them rotating and timing their turns at times! They started out at the kitchen counter. Then we moved them to work at the little school table.
Even the little ones wanted to get in on the work.
We took a break for lunch and the kids watched a movie for a while.
Mr. M REALLY got into his work. Here he is straining seeds from the juice.
Last time we started much earlier in the day and we were working until dinner time. This time we were done by mid-afternoon! What a difference all those kids helping made (and the babies being a year older). What fun to work hard together with our friends and produce the jelly we will be using all year from the fruit in our yard!
I didn't know you could make jam from these! We have only had them once, mum brought them from the fruit shop, but they hadn't been deprickled so I ended up spending ages trying to get prickles out of my fingers that I got through the packaging! Good you have help with that part :)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for hosting us again. We had such a great time!
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