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!
[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Phising in Raleigh with our gang ] [ Painting Spot – Helping our zebra change his stripes ] [ Trouts Farm Yard and Gardens – A Labor of Love ] [ Putting Summer in a jar with our new canning equipment ]