Harvest time - nearing an end

I know I said that I was DONE with tomatoes, BUT.... 

we broke into one of the preserved Spaghetti sauce jars last week for an evening meal....and IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!  Therefore....Cassie and I were outside shortly after 8:00 AM picking about 50 more pounds of tomatoes to make one more batch of Spaghetti Sauce.  

Once the tomato sauce was simmering, we all headed over to a coworker's house to pick some apples.  Cassie has a friend over for the evening, so she also tagged along and helped out. 

 I would show you a picture of my coworker, Darin, but I swore not to.  LOL....

Therefore, I'll show a CROPPED picture of Darin (holding the apple) and his son, Talon and dog, Toby.  (BOTH great names, don't you think??)

Poor Candace couldn't reach any apples from the get-go, so she had the apple-picker for much of the beginning.

Tall Paul used his trusty ol' ladder...

But even HE needed the apple-picker to reach the highest apples on the tree.  

I was hoping the angle of this picture would show how high those apples were, but it doesn't.  Paul is standing on the 2nd-highest rung of his ladder...and the apple-picker is probably 7-8 feet long.

A BOUNTIFUL harvest of yummmmmmies!

We barely made a dent in the apple pickings, but did make up 3 batches of applesauce (for now).  

After a full-day of harvest....it really can be discouraging looking at such a "small" pile of finished product, but.... small is better than nothing.

With temps forecasted to hit frostiness again, we spent the last couple of hours of daylight out in the garden picking most everything we want to still preserve:  mostly peppers, muskmelons and watermelons.  And it was COOOOOLD already! (Thermometer is reading: 47.0 F.)  I headed in a bit before everyone else, so I prepared some mugs of hot chocolate for everyone.  Mmmmm....... 

Potatoes are still in the ground, as are most of the carrots.  The tomatoes will decide whether or not they want to live, because we kept them all on the vines.  If they survive, I have a person interested in more.  If they don't survive.....they gave us (and MANY friends) a great harvest!!!

So tomorrow.....?  I'd love to spend some hours in the sewing room, but I fear that more harvesting will take a higher priority.    I'll see what I can do about finding a balance :)  

{{Besides, I HAVE to find at least one hour of school-mode time to make sure I know what I'll be teaching on Monday.}}

Thank goodness the Packers don't play!  I don't know how I'd fit everything in.