Canning Summer Produce

Time to brush up on my canning skills.

Our neighbor flagged me down last week for a chat, and suggested that we come pick some fruit from his trees.  He didn't have time to deal with it, nor did he wish to see the fruit go to waste.  I'm pretty busy around the farm, too, but then I remembered something very important: the whole point of farming is food!  We work so hard to raise wholesome food, and get so caught up in the never ending projects, that sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.  

We planted a dozen berries and fruit trees in the Springtime, but they are a year or two from producing food.  The Summer vegetable garden, however, is starting to explode with fresh peppers, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, tomatillos, and more.  The long term intention is to can, freeze, pickle, ferment, or just eat as much of it as we are able.

I don't mean to toot our own horn at Red Tail, but in all honesty, toot toot.  We spent most of our first year on the homestead fixing up the 1925 cottage, then we took a break during the Winter, and started gardening in the early Spring.  In just a few months, we've planted dozens of perennials and hundreds of annuals.  We built a chicken coop, fencing, rain catchment, irrigation lines, worm bins, and two large garden plots.  

Getting Red Tail up and running has been a huge undertaking, and it's easy to lose sight of the real purpose:  food!  Everything we do, even our worm operation, is about creating fertility and growing fresh produce.  So, when our neighbor offered us a huge harvest of plums and figs, it only made sense to accept.  The fruit trees are on the other side of the fence; so what?  The neighbor takes good care of the land--he irrigates and free ranges chickens--and the fruit was dark purple, soft, and falling off the branches.  

Plum jam success!  Moving on to pickles....

We hopped the fence that evening and picked about 20 pounds of plums and several pounds of figs.  The figs didn't last long, they are very popular around here, but the plums covered our kitchen table.  We decided to make plum jam; we love PB'n'J samwiches, and have been buying expensive jars of organic jam all year.  This seemed like a great way to save some money this year, and make use of the food growing fifty yards from our kitchen, albeit on the other side of the property line.

It's been years since I've canned; we've been renters, with minimal gardens and regular jobs, for years before moving to Red Tail in July 2017.  It took me a few rounds of making newbie mistakes to get it right.  Overfilling jars, over tightening bands, checking the seal before the jar cools, over- and under-cooking, spilling bits of boiling water and jam on myself, trying to can in a disorganized kitchen.  It was like learning all over again.  On the first day, I ruined some lids, and a had a very low success rate.  On the second day, I cleaned up, got organized, corrected mistakes, and finished the plum jam.  

I went straight into making pickled cukes and peppers.  I must have regained some canning mojo by this point, because the pickles came off without a hitch.  Just as I was cleaning up, Meghan showed up with about five pounds of blackberries from her mom's house.  Once again, we didn't grow it, and it was destined to rot on the vine, so why not?  I started rinsing blackberries, loaded them into a stockpot, and they are cooking as I type this the next morning.  Around lunchtime, I'll start canning again, once my morning farm chores (and blogging) are done.  

Red Tail pickles!

Aside from the immense pride in seeing a cupboard full of organic, fresh, homegrown food, what I really gained from relearning to can this week was an appreciation of the food growing all around us, which frequently goes to waste.  Plenty of folks have productive fruit trees and berries, but not all have the ability to harvest and process it.  If you can work out a deal with the owner of the trees or vines (I've got a couple jars of jam I promised the neighbor who gave us the plums and figs), you can actually achieve the entire goal of homesteading--food!--while bypassing most of the work and investment that usually goes along with growing food.

Time to stop typing, refill my coffee, go pull some weeds, and Meghan brought home a packet of swiss chard seeds the other day....

'Til next time.