PUTTING SUMMER IN A JAR

Test driving our new canning equipment

July, 2010

 

LOCAL FOOD IS SEASONAL

 

Our ancestors canned their summer abundance in order to have something to eat in the winter.  Now that we've settled down, we can too!

We are very excited about putting up local food from our garden and lovingly grown by our friends and neighbors.  Last year we made good use of the freezer but canning is one step better in that the food will be preserved without need for electricity (other than the electricity to process the food.)  If we were to have a long term power outage, we'll be scrambling to deal with our frozen food, but anything we can will sit quietly on the shelf until we desire it.

 

LOTS OF VARIETY

In this picture we have several varieties of tomatoes from Bob's garden - from top left going clockwise, German Queen, (three) Great Whites, Giant Zebra (the mottled green and red) another German Queen lower center and Black Krim in the lower left corner.

 

INTERIM STORAGE IN THE DEEP FREEZE

 

Pretty much every day Bob would bring an armful of tomatoes in from the garden.  On Tuesdays we'd receive our CSA share from Edible Earthscapes with more tomatoes and on Fridays, our Central Carolina Community College CSA share held more yet!  We needed a place to amass the bounty until we had enough to can so we began putting them into the deep freezer.  One of the Black Krims looked a lot like an ex-U S president and seemed to be saying, "I am not a tomato!"

 

TRIAL RUN

 

We thought it prudent to test our equipment and canning methods before our friends came over to can with us, so we put up peaches using the boiling water canner and tomatoes using the pressure canner.

 

TOMATOES AND TOMATO JUICE

We learned that a whole lot of tomato juice comes out of the tomatoes during the skinning and deseeding process.  We boiled it down and put it in the refrigerator to use for soup stock but could have easily canned it along with the tomatoes.

 

PEACHES

 

Jennie busily packs quart jars with peaches with the help of the canning funnel, then pours syrup over them, works out the air bubbles using a rubber spatula and places them in the canner using the jar tongs.

 

JEREMY CAN

 

Jeremy warms the sliced peaches through the hot syrup and packs the jars using the same method.  Jeremy and Jennie peeled and sliced the peaches the evening before bringing them to Trouts Farm to can.

 

BOILING WATER CANNER

After all the quarts were full, we processed them in a boiling water bath using our new Ball Boiling Water Canner.

 

POTATOES, TOO!

 

This is one day's harvest of carrots and three kinds of potatoes, the French Fingerling, Red Thumbs and Russian Banana.  Although one of the beds yielded a whopping seventeen pounds of potatoes, Bob estimated he harvested an average of more than ten pounds for every pound of seed potato he planted this year.  We been making every kind of potato dish we can imagine and they are still coming out of the ground but not to worry, now that we have our new pressure canner!

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