Canning Season

       

   

  It is canning season. The garden is full of tomatoes, fruit is ripe everywhere, and school is about to start. Because we were gone for six weeks of the summer, I am not preserving as much as I usually do. This winter will be the Eat Down Winter, when we finally clear out that jar of salsa from 2014 which has slipped to the back of the shelf every fall despite my best efforts. There are way too many half pint jars of jam downstairs  for any small homestead as well.  “Eat More Jam” is posted on the fridge as a reminder.  Still, there is canning to be done.

                Small batch canning works well for our household—there are two full time eaters and we focus on eating locally. My goal is about 95% local produce, which is not impossible or even unreasonable with a little planning. Right now, I am saving tomatoes for the winter. Thirty pounds from Sunbow were roasted and put up in half pint jars early this week, perfect for pizza, soup, and pasta this winter. I cooked down two soup pots full for sauce—10 pints. There are already dried tomatoes on the shelf and tomato chutney in a far corner. A pile of black tomatoes balances on the table, ready for lunch sandwiches.

                I can work this processing into my daily routine because of the steam canner I bought years ago from Territorial Seed. Rather than hauling out the big canning pot and rack, filling it with water, and waiting for it to heat-- which takes about an hour!—I can heat up  a batch of sauce, pour it into jars, and seal it in half an hour. The steam canner heats up in less than five minutes, uses about a pint of water to seal the jars (you pour a quart in, but most of it remains), and saves an immense amount of time and energy. I can prep a batch of apple butter, set it in the crockpot to cook down overnight, put it in jars in the morning, and have a box full of food ready for the basement shelf before I leave to prep for school in the morning.

                The jars are filling up, slowly and steadily. Every time I take a batch of something down stairs, I re-adjust the food already on the shelves to make room and spend a few moments admiring  my efforts.