This weekend's canning projects: tomatoes, peaches, and bread & butter pickles. 
We've had our first frost and it's been getting rather cool at night so we've had to cover up the precious vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, summer squash) with old sheets. We're a little early for Halloween but they make fantastic ghosts under the full moon. 
My father has taken up wine making and beer making and cider making in the last couple of years as another way to put up the excess fruit that they get every year. They freeze and can a lot of it too and they manage to live almost entirely off the fruits of their garden through the winter months almost as much as the summer months. This year my father received a treasured family heirloom: the cider press that belonged to his grandfather. He remembers this cider press being parked in a dairy barn and all of the family coming and many of the neighbors too, to press their apples into cider. He continues the tradition by collaborating on the beverage making process with several young neighbors. My favorites out of his home made beverages are the perry (a pear cider), the apricot wine, and a plum beer - he also made an awesome Merlot from grapes he picked at a local farm. Both he and my mother have given away fruits of their garden and harvest labor ever since I can remember. It was this that made my dad decide he needs a label. So we have embarked on a father-daughter search for the image we want to use most for his label and then I will help him format it so he can put his name on it, the name of the particular beverage, and the year. I'm rather fond of the picture below which is a modified image of the beloved cider press. What do you think?
