more storage for canning

The time finally came. The time where I clearly needed more space if I planned to continue canning as much as I have been. We filled our little jar shelf that used to sit in this space and then another two shelves in the pantry, a half shelf in the garage of empty jars, and still we were squeezing jar into random places. Random places that I would, of course, forget about when I needed a particular item. We've talked about added more jar storage in this space for nearly a year, and the time finally came.

We hired another parent from our kids' school to build this shelf unit, then I immediately set to work on the painting. The paint on the top 3 shelves are drying as I type, but I just couldn't wait any longer to get some of these jars out of the hallway!

The best I can figure, this shelf will hold about 250 jars of varying sizes, which is about how many we have right now. If I decide to can more than that, we'll still have to utilize part of the pantry, but at least the bulk of our jars will be in a single, organized location.

Bring on the summer! I'm ready to start canning!

PS. Have you visited The Book Children recently? There's a giveaway right now so check it out!

weekending

The weather yesterday was beautiful, and we took full advantage. Finn and I visited the farmer's market and came home with a Penny Redwing pansy for him to plant in one of the flower beds. He was thrilled to be able to dig the hole and plant it himself.

I also stumbled upon a booth full of Sweet Charlie strawberry plants, which I had trouble resisting. Elizabeth asked last summer if she could have a raised bed of her own. We dug out the grass in that spot and put down landscape paper, but that was as far we got on that project. Once I came home with the strawberries, I asked her if she'd be interested in taking charge of the strawberry bed. She was thrilled.

Although I forgot to take photos of the construction, she helped nail together the boards for the raised bed, then helped pour the soil, peat, and compost into the bed. She smoothed it all out and planted all of the strawberry plants herself. I'm delighted to have a bed of strawberries and even more pleased to have an assistant gardener to help care for them. Now today is chilly and rainy, but at least our lovely plants are getting their thirst quenched.

making do

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Ah...the mantra of every man, woman, and child of the Great Depression. Not as much of a mantra for the Gen X, Gen Y, or Millenials, although you do hear a similar sentiment in the "going green" movement. I grew up with a bit of this mentality, and it has definitely carried over into my adult life. Our cloth napkins are a perfect example. They've been a part of our family for longer than Finn; many of them are stained and worn, yet they remain in constant circulation. (Although we do keep a few nicer ones tucked away for guests and holidays.)

Last year, I wrote briefly about the little farmstead we put an offer on and how that fell apart. I didn't wallow much in this space, or even outside of this space, because I'm not much of a wallower. I think that my heart wallowed more than I was willing to admit though. I found myself looking at houses with land in our area for hours and hours through the months of April and May of last year. Finally I admitted to myself that this didn't seem to be the path we were supposed to follow right now because the right place had not manifested itself since the first little farmstead that captured our hearts.

And so, for months and months, little things started languishing in the house where we currently live. Nothing huge. I just could seem to think about updating the paint in the dining room here when we might be moving somewhere else. Wouldn't that be a waste of time and energy?

Somewhere around September of last fall, I finally had a stern conversation with myself. The kids were still asking occasionally if we were going to move. I only had vague answers for them. Other folks who knew about our plans would ask. I would feel somewhat rankled to have to keep answering those questions. A decision needed to be made. Not a decision on which house to buy. A decision to make do. We felt like this was the perfect place to raise our family back we had only 3 small children. Our family has grown, and those children are now teens. If it doesn't feel like a perfect fit right now, then what can we do to make it a better fit?

This new mentality was part of the driving force in the crazy decision to redo each of the kids' bedrooms for Christmas. (You can see the results here, here, and here.) And since Christmas, I've been slowing working my way through other spaces that have been less than perfect, making them fit our needs better. The laundry room and Paulie's closet have been reorganized, and we just bought the necessary parts to get our jetted tub back in working condition. In the next month we have projects slated to make new curtains and paint the dining room, to build a shelf to reorganize and create more storage for the canning jars, to clear some of the brush from our back fence that is shading the garden.

Through each of these projects and through the conversations as a family about our plans to stay here, I feel myself growing more content, more objective, more peaceful in our life here at this house. Maybe one day those plans will change, maybe they won't. But not one more minute will be wasted in expectation. Making do is much more soothing for the soul, and that's more important than the perfect farmstead anyway.

apple picking

Although we woke up to a foggy almost-autumn morning with the threat of rain, we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best as we drove up into the mountains, just over the Virginia border, to the apple farm. While we didn't enjoy the same beautiful view as last time, the orchard shrouded in fog displays a subtle beauty different from the picturesque wide blue sky and mountain peak charm. It's easier to notice the wildflowers right in front of you, or the shading of the tree limbs. When we were soggy from our jeans down to our squishy shoes, we had about 1.5 bushels of apples, with more purchased from the packing house, and 5 happy soggy children. That's the essence of successful apple picking trip, I guess. 

PS. The muffins you see in the photographs are Pumpkin Streusel Muffins. A requisite snack for any autumnal adventure, in my opinion.

the busy work of summer

I fear I have been rather neglectful of this space as of late. The last few weeks have found great deals of produce at small prices as late summer's bounty swings into my local farmer's market. These are the busy days of summer.  I remember these days as a child, keeping myself occupied as my parents spent long hours dealing with bushels of peaches, bags full of tomatoes, or, as on one occasion, an entire trunkful of corn (no small feat in the vast trunk of the Delta 88).

Last summer I tried freezing peaches for smoothies, instead of just canning them. Unfortunately, once the peaches froze into a solid mass of icy peaches, there was no separating just a few for smoothies so most of those peaches went into peach cobblers--not that I heard anyone complaining about that! This year I decided to freeze them on trays before placing them into bags. I also discovered that my Vitamix will easily blend the peach skins. Leaving the skins on the peaches makes quick work of freezing peaches.

I also acquired 7 dozen ears of corn, which were all blanched and frozen on the cob.  My children love their corn on the cob, and it's much more expensive (than off the cob) to buy in the off-season. Now we can have local Silver Queen corn in the autumn and winter.

I canned Dilly Beans again, while enjoying the last jar of last year's Dilly Beans. This pickle is one of our favorites. Food in Jars has a fabulous recipe for them, although I leave out the cayenne pepper for the heat-adverse members of our family.

Last but not least, I purchased 50 lbs of tomatoes to finish up the rest of my tomato canning for the season.  I'm nearly out of jars, which means the tomato canning must be nearly finished. Pictured below is diced tomatoes in the quart jars, pizza sauce and garden salsa (double the cilantro, please) in the pints.

And now my children, much like I did in my youth, are finding ways to pass the long, slow days of summer while I spend my days in the kitchen with my trusty canner. Finn has found joy in taking care of his stuffed friend, Fruffy, who is here eating a breakfast of fabric scraps while Finn enjoys homemade ketchup on his scrambled eggs.

Elizabeth has picked up a love of cross-stitching this summer, enabled by a kit she received for her last birthday.

weekend canning

This weekend found me home with just Finn for the weekend. I decided to take advantage of that opportunity and start the tomato canning for the season.  As luck would have it, I also found cherries on sale and decided to make a batch of cherry butter as well. (While my cherry canning last year was quite extensive, this year's local cherry season lasted only about 3 weeks, mostly while we were on our road trip.  By the time we arrived home, we'd missed it.) If you ever find yourself with 10 lbs of cherries that you've no plans for, you should definitely pull out a crock pot and turn them into cherry vanilla butter. Slathered on warm biscuits, it's one of our favorite winter treats! If you find yourself gasping at the thought of using 6-7 tablespoons of expensive vanilla (on top of the usually expensive cherries), a vanilla bean or two that has been slit and scraped will work.  I just fish the beans out of the butter before canning. (Or you can make your own vanilla and save some dough that way.)

As for the tomato canning, I picked about 15 lbs of tomatoes from my own garden on Friday, then bought about 60 lbs of canning tomatoes from a vendor at our farmer's market. I've gotten quite a few questions about tomato canning recently. I'll try to answer a few of them here. I do have specific recipes that I follow for making both canned spaghetti sauce and canned pizza sauce. You cannot just take a recipe that you generally use for making sauce and can it in a water bath (pressure canning is a different story). Food in Jars has a great post on why it is unsafe to use a regular recipe for canning rather than a recipe that is meant to be canned. Here are the links for the recipes I use for pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. I've used each of them for a few years although I adjust the seasonings.

Another tip that my mom told me a couple of years ago that has worked beautifully: after you blanch and peel the tomatoes, dice or break them apart then drain them in a colander that drains into a bowl. I do this with all of the tomatoes that I use in my spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce. Once the tomatoes are drained, I put them in the pot to make the sauce and pour the leftover juice into freezer containers. The two benefits to this are that the sauce needs less simmering to cook down into a thick sauce and the frozen juice is perfect to add to soups and chilis in the winter.

About half the jars you see in the photo above are just diced tomatoes. I do not drain those, but just dice, heat in a pot to bubbling, then add to sterilized jars, and pressure can for 15 minutes at 11 lbs of pressure. It seems like a lot of work, but even if you just start with diced tomatoes, which are simple and take little time, I think you'll find the value in turning seasonally fresh tomatoes into a very useful product for fall and winter.

back to Blueberry Hill

We had such a great experience last year picking blueberries at Blueberry Hill down in SC while visiting friends, that we decided to repeat the experience this year.  Of course, from year to year, any kind of gardening or farming is tricky, and this year with the cooler spring, rainy summer, and recently picked bushes, we didn't have near the luck filling our baskets as last year.

Our workers started out strong, but they soon tired of having to search harder to find the ripe berries and just gave in to the call of the farm animals.

I always love watching the littlest members of the group figuring out the art of berry picking...and eating.

We did manage to get a couple of gallons between us, and plenty of snacking.

I felt incredibly fortunate to be picking berries with these lovely ladies.  We've been good friends since 4th grade, nearly 27 years now. I am blessed to live close enough to see one of them regularly (and she, or her children, pops up frequently here), but we rarely see her twin who lives in Ireland. The last time we were all together was Thanksgiving 2009, when there were 3 less babies between us.

Now we have 12 children between us, and although Paulie and Philip weren't with me for this trip, the rest of our children were reacquainted and enjoyed picking blueberries together. At the end of this month, we're planning another trip to see them before we are separated again for a while.