Tomato Day?

Yesterday Lynnie and Beth came out and we had our annual tomato day, which we usually do  in October, but due to the wedding, and then farming, and then quilt retreat, then Thanksgiving....well, you get the idea.....Tomato Day happened yesterday!

We had a wonderful time together, catching up on life, and making a few pints of stewed tomatoes in the process!  We had a shorter crop this year, for various reasons.  We will each take home 20 pints, which will see us through 'til fall.

Some years we work on the same project, but this year we weren't quite that organized.  Since we all have, a'hem....several unfinished projects waiting in the wings, we chose to work on a few of those as the tomatoes stewed!

A wonderful day with good friends, good gardeners, and good homemakers.  I am so lucky!

Matching tomato day aprons that Beth made for us a few tomato days ago!

We all freeze our tomatoes as they ripen during the gardening year.  Lynnie is the Martha Stewart of gardening and always has the most tomatoes to contribute.

She also had a bumper crop of onions.  I usually have enough sweet and hot peppers to add to the pot, but didn't have time to freeze the sweet peppers this year for our mix.  I did manage to dry the hot peppers.  We had to buy sweet peppers and celery.

Tomatoes stewing!

Lynnie's tomato day project.

Beth got several projects "prepped" and ready to work on as time allows.

Lynnie brings her pressure canner and I have mine, so we can process quite a few pints at once.

These guys are processed and ready to remove from the canner.

Only 60 pints this year.  Neither Beth nor I had a good tomato crop this past gardening year, so we had to rely solely on Lynnie's crop.  

A close up of our work.  The house smelled so good all afternoon.  Looking forward to using the fruits of our labor.