Apricot Season

We had wonderful blessing from the church farm this year. After the church has picked all they can use, they turn the orchard over to the members to glean. Lucky for me, most people don't know what to do with Apricots. Look how loaded this branch is. That's after it's been harvested.

My neighbor Ellen wanted to come pick and learn how to bottle Apricot Juice, Apricot syrup and Apricot jam. This is her son Trevor.

Here's my Brev. He was such a good helper as was Megan.

I think we got two full laundry baskets off each tree. It was such easy picking. Of course this is the "on" year for Apricots. Next year will not be as good. So I planned ahead and picked 8 laundry baskets.

This is Megan's best friend Cassie. Also our neighbor.

Ter was totally awesome with sorting and washing all eight baskets. The ones that were really ripe had to be done that night. So I was working inside while everyone else worked outside.

Very messy job. Way sticky! The kids are pulling the apricots apart and throwing the seeds in a bucket

My first night ended at 2:30 a.m.

Everyday after that for two weeks ended somewhere between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. I know I'm crazy, but when the fruit is free and ready, life kind of takes a back seat.

I helped my neighbor do several batches then worked on the stuff for me, my mom and Sarah.

This is where we stacked everything until we headed up north.

Ter was worried the floor might collapse. There are 214 jars of Apricot Juice, syrup and jam. At this point, we still had 3 laundry baskets of apricots. Next on the list was to dry some.

These are my trays that my mom made many years ago. They have a fiberglass mesh stapled to a wood frame. Regular metal mesh will re-act with the sulfur.

I made a little tray out of tin foil, added sulfur and newspaper, then lit it.

You then cover the flame and trays with a box and let the sulfur burn for about 3 hours. Be sure to push dirt up against the base of the box so no air can get in or out. This process kills the bacteria that causes the apricots to turn brown.

While I was waiting for the sulfur to burn I pureed some apricots with a little sugar and layed it out to dry in the sun. I covered a card table with plastic wrap. The leather pulls off easily once its dried.

Once the sulfur burned off, I layed the apricots in the sun to dry. This took about 2 days of good heat. See how pretty and orange they are. They have stayed this color even in storage.

I actually had to hide them or my family would have eaten them up in one day.