The color of your peach syrup is gorgeous! I actually did this a few years ago because my people love to eat pancakes and waffles like they are going out of style, but your idea of adding cinnamon sticks and vanilla bean is just the greatest!
Most of the time in the summer, I give our food scraps to our pigs and chickens, boy do they love them. In the winter I keep a bucket in the fridge of all the veggie scraps and turn it into stock, it is soo good!
Doesn't it just kill you when you realize how much sugar has to go into a syrup or jam? It's always a 2:1 ratio it seems, and I have tried to get away with shortcuts before, so I totally had a good chuckle when I read your "ask me how I know!" statement, LOL!
That was mighty nice of Mr. Bear to remove the hornet's nest for you, but hopefully he'll leave you more of those gorgeous peaches to enjoy this year:) Also, I love, love, love your blog and am so looking forward to your posts and scrap-eriments, you are awesome!!!
I was happy how the co!or turned out although I wasn't sure if I had enough peels or not, since I split them. We like the cinnamon, vanilla version best. I will probably make it all that way next time. We have 7 bears living around us so we have to fight for our fruit. They ate 3 out of 5 apple trees last year too. I guess in the end we all had plenty though. I do like giving away peaches. People seem more excited over them than anything. This year was my very first canning experiences so I was documenting everything with pictures and I journaled all steps with my wine. I learned alot except what kind of canner I want. I only did water bath last year so I am hoping to add more skills this year. Thank you again for all the cyber love this week. I hope to get better very soon at understanding how best to boost other newbies. I hope you have a great weekend!
Having grown up with lots of bears, I wish you luck in the fruit battle, those of the bruin-set don't relent when it comes to tasty treats! LOL! You could always distract them with some used diapers, the bears at dump seemed to love those, ha ha!
You are so cool to share your harvest! For many years I grew about a 1/2 an acre of pumpkins and gave them away to all the neighbor kids, and they loved them! You share peaches, which of course means you are extra awesome, dang!
For years, I only water bath canned, as I was mildly terrified of pressure canners thanks to horror stories that I heard from many of the grandmas in my life. Over the last couple of years I abandoned my fear and started pressure cooking, it's awesome! I even pressure canned a bunch of tiny potatoes, they turned out fantastic! Still love and mostly do water bathing though:o)
I am so looking forward to more of your homesteading kitchen adventure posts, they rock!