Carrie, Angelina, and Pumpkins

This is my friend Carrie, we've known each other for approximately six years.  Really known each other in a close way, in the past two years.  Carrie is sweet, kind, gentle, and considerate.  A heck of a package to have as a friend.

Carrie is learning to can, she started last year which is good because she has a large family and she's still very young.  She has made apple butter, applesauce, grinds her own wheat for bread, she's really getting the "homesteading" attitude down. 

Several years ago I told her, if you ever learn to can meat, learn from someone you trust and who has years of experience.  I got a call last week............. Carrie wanted to learn to can smoked turkey and fresh pumpkins.  I was ready to teach her(and I felt honored that she asked me).

Yesterday I drove over to her lil' homestead(she's about six miles from our homestead)..........pressure canner, canning tongs, and my tea bags all in tow.  I knew it would be a long day, canning days always are.  We fired up the tea kettle, chatted and giggled while we set up all our canning supplies.  Carrie had made a nice fire in the wood-stove to keep us warm.............and warm it kept us!  We had windows and a front door open after that first canner load fired up! 

I showed Carrie how to scrub, cut and peel a pumpkin.  We let Miss Angelina also help, she is Carrie's three year old daugther, she's so darn adorable AND bossy!  Angelina got to put the cubed chunks of pumpkin in the pot as we peeled.  It was an important job for her and she took it very seriously.  She stood at the sink with us on a 25 pound laundry soap container so she could be one of the "canner girls."  She told us she was "big enough to help us."  And help she truly did.

I know Carrie because her husband works daily with my husband.  Both are surveyors and friends.  Carrie and Shane have five kids, three biological children and two young foster children.  The oldest child of theirs is Jeremiah, he is six, then sweet Angelina, and 7 month old Layne.  Carrie is still nursing Layne, I'm a BIG advocate for nursing your babies.  All are beautiful children, well behaved, and a joy to be around as are their parents. 

In fact, I barter eggs with Shane (he loves our fresh eggs) and he sharpens my hoof trimmers for our sheep.  He works a stone and a blade like no one I've ever known, we're talking SHARP!!!  Shane will probably "kill me" for saying so, but he also makes a mean banana nut bread which he has shared with me on occasion.  I hear from his wife, that he also makes a killer cheesecake, pies and lasagna.  He is one of the hardest working young men I've ever known and he's a "jack of all trades, master of all." 

Shane and Carrie are a wonderful Christian couple who spent many months training to become foster parents.  They have a five year old foster daughter, and her lil' brother who is two, their youngest sibling(a baby) is not with them.  These two foster children have lived a very sad, rough life for their "wee" years.  "The Man" and I admire them deeply for their devotion to these kids.  These two lil' foster kids tell them they "love them" often.  I can't imagine the heartbreak they will go through when these children have to go..........and it may not be for adoption purposes, it may just be placing them into another foster home.

We finally wound up our lil' task of canning around 4, although I left Carrie with a canner load of pumpkin jiggling away, she wouldn't be done completely for sometime.............but she had it down when I left.  Shane will now have fresh spiced, canned, pumpkin to make his holiday pies.

It was a wonderful day for staying indoors and teaching such a sweet woman and her "princess" how to can.  I got to play with Angelina, she's such a "big girl," and I got to hold a sweet baby......I don't think Jeremiah was overly thrilled with the "canner girls" he played all day with his building blocks.  I do think his lil' ears perked when I told him to make sure and come out to the ranch this spring when the lambs are born. 

The world is such a better place because of this family, I'm truly "blessed" to call them our friends.