Time Saving Canning Hacks From Prep to POP!

A "light load" in 2017 with chocolate black raspberry
dessert spread, blueberry pie filling, strawberry-lemonade
concentrate, and black raspberry vinegar.  

     Have you ever had someone see a picture of your canned goods and think you're nuts and that you must never have a chance to sit down, like ever?  

     For us, it's not uncommon to make sure by the end of canning season anywhere from 700 to 900 jars of canned goods are filled to last us until we can those particular products again (and yes, we plan to eat them all before you ask).  To do so, it could easily mean a couple dozen jars done in a morning or evening, or 100+ jars done over a long canning weekend.  We've noticed that a lot of people seem to think that doing this will take FOREVER, but it doesn't have to!  There's certainly places that you can "cut corners" to save time and still safely can your garden's bounty for out-of-season use.  

Step 1. Sterilizing canning jars 

Washing canning jars in my husband's
apartment kitchen in 2012.

     Jars right out of the package or off your storage shelf (even though they've been cleaned in the past) are not considered sterilized.  Did you know that according to the National Center for Home Food Preservation you don't have to sterilize your jars if you'll be processing them for more than ten minutes in a water bath or pressure canner?  Since we can everything for more than ten minutes, we do an abbreviated "sterilization" by washing our jars with a clean washcloth in a scrubbed out sink in hot soapy water.  Then they get loaded onto cookie sheets and placed in a 200 degree oven to keep them warm.  We heat them for at least ten minutes in the oven prior to use so the jars are hot when they come out, and therefore hot when the hot lid/food hits them as well.  We've found this assists in keeping the jars from breaking when different temperatures meet.  

     Tip: Any water drops that are left on them when they enter the oven are usually gone by the time the jars come out, and therefore we don't bother drying them off between the two.

     Tip: We found that however many jars your recipe calls for, always have an extra one or two ready to go because it'll likely make more, not less, than what your recipe says.  So think like a Boy Scout, and Be Prepared for that to happen.  

Step 2. Heating lids

     I've watched some people skip this step altogether, but along with it being more sterile for your soon-to-be processed canned goods, it also really helps get the wax on the standard canning lids heated up.  There's multiple ways to heat lids including just piling them all in a pot on the stovetop, but we use two handy gadgets - a canning lid rack and canning magnetic lid lifter - that make quick work of heating and using the lids.

      A canning lid rack holds twelve lids vertically, and can be submerged in a pot of water.  It keeps the lids separated so they don't accidentally stick together when the wax begins to heat up.  New these cost between $9-20 depending on the brand.

     A canning magnetic lid lifter is simply a magnet on the end of a stick.  Complex I know!  In the early days of us canning we used a pair of tongs to lift the lids out of the hot water, but now with a magnet, there's no more having the lids accidentally slide back into the pot, and seemingly hours of fishing around in the bottom of the pot for the last remaining lid.  New these cost between $2-8 depending on the brand.

     Tip: Heat an extra lid or two in case you drop one during the processing.  They can always be cooled down and reheated again at a later time.  

Step 3. Prepping your canned goods

Prepped recipes during Peach Season 2015.

     Ask yourself, "How many recipes worth am I planning on making today?" before you get started.  We don't just prep one recipe at a time, but at least two.  If you're planning on doing a lot of canning, you never want to have a stilled canner as a stilled canner means wasted processing time.

     I had started pre-prepping multiple recipes during peach and apple processing a few years ago because it just made more sense to get it all done while your hands were already sticky, and you could sit and watch television.  In that case, I chop all the peaches and other produce that is needed for a particular recipe beforehand, label them and stick them in the fridge so whenever I need to refill the canner with something other than what I was previously canning, there's a recipe more-or-less ready to drop into a pot and heat up.

Pizza sauce (back left), sweet 'n' sour sauce (front left) and tomato sauce
(front right) cooking down on the stove in 2016.

     When doing jams or tomato sauce-based recipes, I like to have one pot on the front burner, and one pot on the back burner, spaced evenly apart time-wise so that when one set of jars is ready to come out of the canner, a new set can easily go in.  I've found that it takes me approximately 10 minutes to take the jars out of the oven, fill them on the cookie tray so any drips and spills are easy to clean, and secure the lids and bands.  Usually, right as I'm putting on the last band, the previous load of jars is ready to come out of the canner.

     Tip: Gallon pickle jars, half gallon canning jars, and 8+ cup plastic containers make great options to store pre-prepped goods before you're ready to use them.

     Tip: To keep your fruit looking fresh and the proper color, place in a container of cool water with some Fresh Fruit powder or lemon juice.

Step 4. Heating your (water bath) canner.

      Fill up your canner with water before you need it.  We even get the water in our water bath heating about thirty minutes before we need it so that the hot jars won't touch cold water when they go in.  Then, even if you have to adjust the water level of the canner, it won't take nearly as long to heat back up once you've filled it with canned goods. 

     Tip: Keep a mixing bowl filled with water in your kitchen sink so you can level off the water of the water bath canner to at least one inch above your jars once they are in.

    Tip: If you want to keep your jars (especially those that go into a pressure canner) from getting water spots, add a little bit of white vinegar into the water as you are heating it.

Step 5. Filling the jars

     Splish!  Splash!  I think I need a bath!  This is by far the messiest part of canning for us because you're on a tight timetable to get the hot jars out of the oven, the hot ingredients into the jars (we don't do a lot of cold pack), and the hot lids on the jars, and then everything quickly and effectively into a canner.  I found the most effective way to do this is make sure you have a fully prepped "fill space" next to the stove (if possible).  Imagine that you're prepping a surgical area, so you want to have everything laid out in easy reach.  Here's the big three that you need to remember:

• Gather everything you need to fill the jars: ladle or deep spoon, funnel for easy filling (we use a plastic collapsible canning funnel that costs around $5), small metal spoon to skim off foam or change volume in the jars, butter knife to remove air bubbles.
• Keep the lids and rings at close reach.  This sometimes includes putting a potholder out for the lids if they are located on a burner too far away on the stovetop, and having a basket full of clean rings handy.  Make sure you have your magnet handy if you are using it!  
• Hot pads are your friend.  We put out two potholders for our cookie tray to balance on with the hot jars from the oven.  You'll also want to have an oven mitt or glove to remove the cookie tray, take off the hot water bath lid, and also to tighten any rings on the jars once they are filled.  

     For me, it's always easiest to work in a grid pattern when I fill the jars then, leaving those furthest from the canner for last so nothing gets dripped into the otherwise empty jars and they can either be filled with another load, or cooled and put away without having to clean them.

     Tip: Think of this process as an assembly line.  Fill all the jars first, so you have the chance to adjust their volume easier if need be.  Then put all the lids on.  Then put on the rings and tighten them as you go.  Once they are all ready to go, open the canner lid and place them in.  

     Note: Even if a lid pops once the ring is screwed on, process it anyways.  Processing is not used just to seal the jar, but to heat whatever is being canned to a high enough temperature to make it shelf stable.  

Step 6. Removing the jars from the canner

Removing jars from the canner in 2012.

     CRRRRAAAACCCCKKKK.  It's bound to happen at least once in your canning career; a jar cracks either in the canner, or once it's removed, and makes what could be considered one of the stickiest canning messes you'll ever see.  To try to prevent this from happening, take some precautions:

• DON'T remove the jars immediately from the (water bath) canner, but turn off the burner, remove the canner's lid, and set the timer for five minutes.  The jars not only start to cool down during these five minutes, but the lids (at least in our experience) are more likely to pop within the first minute or two of the jars coming out.  
• DON'T remove hot jars from a canner into the direct flow of an air conditioner or fan, or cool them in that air flow.  The change in temperature is likely to make them break.  DO keep those cooling devices on until it is time to remove the jars or otherwise it'll be hot, hot, hot in your kitchen!
• DON'T knock the jars against the side of the canner when removing them.  
• DON'T drop the jars back into the canner.  Actual jar lifters designed for the purpose of lifting canning jars make a world of difference to the safety of your jars.  They cost anywhere from $3-$13 new depending on the exact style and brand you choose.  
• DO slightly tip the jar to drain most of the water off the lid before you move it to your cooling location.  The last thing you'll want is a burn from the very hot water.  

Canned pineapple, apple pie filling, apple butter, and hot
pepper jam cooling on the table in 2013.

     Make sure you have a place prepared to let your jars cool before they need to come out of the canner.  You can use cookie trays with dish towels or cookie racks on, turkey roasters with their roasting racks, dish towels or bath towels laid out on tables or counters, or also cookie racks with towels or foil underneath to catch any overflow that might occur.  Although we started off just using the cookie tray and racks to cool them on, as our batches got bigger, we quickly ran out of racks.  We now remove all of our jars to a cookie tray to then carry them over to their cooling location on a large bath towel set on either a table, desk or trunk away from any direct air flow.  

• DON'T check your lids too early.  This may result in a false seal, and therefore a ruined jar of canned goods.  Within about an hour or two all the lids should have popped.  Any canned goods with lids that have not popped should be stored in the fridge.  Wait at least eight hours to pack up your canned goods for storage.  
• DO label all your canned goods before storing them with both year and their contents.  Trust me... you won't remember which kind of jam it is when you're looking at a sea of reds and purples without having a label on it.  

     I hope some of this is helpful in making your canning process a little easier!  What time saving tips do you have in the canning kitchen?  

How Much Should I Plant?

     As we work towards the ongoing chore of planning and planting the 2017 garden, that semi-crazy idea of growing enough food to sustain ourselves comes to mind once again.  In reality, we don't have the space, nor the time, it would take to be truly 100% sustainable, so we (more or less) plant enough food to supplement our trips to the grocery store, and certainly lower the grocery bills.  

So much zucchini!  2013 was the year of
more zucchini than I ever cared to see,
some of them almost reaching the
width of baseball bats!  

     Determining exactly how much we need to plant to do this comes with a lot of trial and error, and for certain crops, we've never made it past the error stage.  There are; however, some crops that we are essentially sustainable with unless there is a bad harvest year.  There was the one year that we planted a whopping 200 pea seeds, and yielded over 20 pounds of the tiny green things that blistered our fingers as we shelled them by hand.  The following year we upped it to 400 seeds and a different variety for the spring, and got a measly few ounces of peas that didn't even amount to half a pound for our efforts.  There was the year that our zucchini was decimated by squash bugs, followed by a year where we prayed the squash bugs would decimate the single plant that was producing over 30 pounds of zucchini and causing us to toss more than just the occasional scrap to the chickens.  It's essentially a toss up with what Mother Nature might throw at you.

     It all boils down to how much should I plant?  I've been asked this question multiple times, and in reality, it all comes down to trial and error.  We started off using advice from the internet by simply Googling "how much to plant" paired with some common sense to figure out how much to plant the first year.  From there, we started to expand upon what we needed more of based upon how quickly certain crops were used up.  Here's three tips to get you started that go beyond Googling "how much to plant":

Sit down and calculate what you actually use over the course of a year.

We try not to overburden ourselves with canning and do 1-year,
2-year and 3-year cycles.  Pictured above is a 3-year canning
cycle of Mixed Berry and Strawberry jams.  This year
(2017) our cycles collide so we will be canning all three
cycles at once.  YIKES!

     I know this sounds time consuming (it is) and bothersome, but when your up to your ears in spaghetti squash that only one of your family members will touch, you'll wish you would have listened.  We have three categories that we take into consideration: canned goods, frozen food, and dry goods (and root crops).  I generally don't calculate what we'll eat fresh because that greatly fluctuates with what is in abundance when harvesting.

     Below is an example of what we preserve for consumption later.  (Items that are crossed out means we are using up our current stock and do not plan to can or otherwise preserve them again in the coming year.  Items that are in parenthesis means that we plan on adding them in the coming year if our harvest permits.)

Canned Goods Apple Barbecue Sauce Apple Butter Apple Juice Apple Pie Filling Apple Pie Jam Applesauce (Baked Beans) (Beef Stock) Blueberry Pie Filling Bread and Butter Pickles Carrot Cake Jam (Chicken Stock) Corn Relish Corn Salsa Cranberry Relish Cranberry Sauce Dill Pickles Duck Sauce Grape Jelly Grape Juice Ham Stock Hot Pepper Jam Ketchup Marmalade Mixed Berry Jam Peaches Peach Honey Butter Peach Jam Peach Pie Filling Peach Salsa Pineapples Pizza Sauce Raspberry Jam Raspberry Jelly Raspberry Lemonade Concentrate Rhubarb Jam Rhubarb Relish Rhubarb Sunshine Concentrate Roasted Red Pepper Spread Salsa Sauerkraut Spaghetti Sauce Strawberries Strawberry Jam Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate Strawberry Rhubarb Jam Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Filling Strawberry Syrup Sweet 'N' Sour Sauce Sweet Pickles Sweet Pickle Relish Tomatoes, Diced Tomatoes, Whole Tomato Juice Tomato Paste Tomato Sauce Tomato Soup Turkey Stock Vegetable Stock Wineberry Jam

Frozen Foods Blackberries Blueberries Broccoli, florets Cabbage, quartered Cauliflower, florets Chili Peppers, diced Celery Celery Leaves Corn on the Cob Corn Green Beans Green/Spring Onions Jalapeno Peppers, diced Lima Beans Patty Pan Squash, sliced Peaches Peas Pumpkin, cooked Raspberries Spaghetti Squash, cooked Strawberries Sweet Peppers, sliced Tomatoes, whole cherry Wax Peppers, diced Wineberries Yellow Squash, coined Zucchini, coined Zucchini, shredded Prepared Frozen Foods From Garden/Produce Apple Dumpling Roll-ups Cream of Celery Soup Egg Rolls Enchilada Sauce Pesto Chicken Scraps  *We keep chicken scraps  frozen to feed them over  the winter to supplement  their diets when there is  limited pasture Cabbage, shredded Garden Scraps Mulberries Radishes Frozen Produce Surplus left from previous years

Dry Goods Basil, multiple varieties Black Beans Catnip Chili Peppers Corn Dill Garlic Hulless Oats Hutterite Soup Beans Kidney Beans Lima Beans Mangals - chicken feed Meadowmint Onions, multiple varieties Oregano Parsley Pinto Beans Popcorn Potatoes, multiple varieties Pumpkins Scarlet Runner Beans Speariment Squash Sugar Beets - chicken feed Thyme Tomatoes, sun-dried

     Now after reading that list you are probably feeling a little overwhelmed, or perhaps proclaiming "ain't nobody got time for that!"  (Which I wholeheartedly agree with.)  Again, this is an example of how calculating what we use over a course of a year works for us.  It is certainly not meant to be what your family will do because every family has different tastes.

You plant it, you preserve it!  Processing tomatoes is always
the biggest chore around here because there are so many of
them!  This is an evening's worth of cutting tomatoes in 2014
to go through the processor and start canning in the morning.

     In this example, I'm going to use tomatoes as it's a fairly common item for people to plant in their gardens.  Out of the above items, the following have tomatoes in: Corn Salsa, Ketchup, Pizza Sauce, Salsa, Spaghetti Sauce, Sweet 'N' Sour Sauce, Diced Tomatoes, Whole Tomatoes, Tomato Paste, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Soup, Vegetable Stock, frozen Cherry Tomatoes, Enchilada Sauce, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes.  That's a lot of tomato products!  Now say your family eats two large pizzas every month.  A large pizza equals one jar of pizza sauce, meaning you would need to can 24 jars of pizza sauce to get you through the year.  To make 24 (jelly) jars of pizza sauce using Ball's recipe, you will need 39 cups of plum tomato puree (or about 13 pounds worth of plum/paste tomatoes).  IF you are having a good season with a good plant, a single tomato plant can produce 20-30 pounds worth of tomatoes, so you would have to plant half a plant to make pizza sauce, and then the additional harvest for the remaining plant could go to another tomato product.  You would then use the same method for the remaining recipes you want to can to get an estimate of how many tomato plants you'll need to plant.  We usually plant one or two extra in the garden to help if we might have a bad year.  (Note: We plant anywhere from 18 to 40 tomato plants in any given year depending on how many tomato products need canned as we stagger our canning in 1-year, 2-year and 3-year intervals.  A 40 tomato plant year will yield around 600 pounds of tomatoes for us, or an average of just fifteen pounds per plant.  This leads me to my second tip...)

Write It Down!

     Every year you plant you should keep records to help you determine how much you need to plant in subsequent years.  Although you swear you'll remember, in the midst of a crazy harvest season, it's a lot easier to just write it down and look it up than wrack through your already nerve-wracked brain.  We use a cheap produce scale (it's not even digital) and white board that's attached to the side of the fridge to record weight totals as the produce comes in.  Once the white board gets filled, I input the totals and dates the items were harvested into an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate our total produce amount over the season. 

     Having records that tell you how much you planted, and how much you yielded are helpful in averaging how much you will get from each plant in your particular growing location.  Keep in mind, just because you planted ten tomato plants one year and got x-amount of pounds of tomatoes, it does not mean you will get the same amount of tomatoes the following year.  

     After looking back through your records you'll get an idea with how much you should plant.  Here's three examples from our garden, which we are only feeding two from: 

Lima Beans - 38" double row (about 150 seeds).  

This gives us enough to eat fresh, freeze some for use throughout the year, and also enough to dry as seeds for planting next year.  (What happens if we get too much?  If we end up with too many Lima beans, succotash will be added to the menu more often.)

Peas (Hull or Shell) - 38" double row (about 400 seeds) - single planting 

This gives us enough to eat fresh and freeze some for use throughout the year; however, we do not have (at this point) enough to save seeds as well.  We hope with a double planting in the spring and fall this coming year, there will be enough to save dried peas for seeds the following year.  (What happens if we get too much?  Looks like Sheppard's pie will have extra peas in!)

Potatoes - three 38" rows (about 10lbs of seed potatoes).

This gives us enough to eat fresh, store for use throughout the year, and about 10lbs worth to use as seed potatoes for the following year; however, we do need to supplement potatoes from planting until harvesting (about four months) from the grocery store.  Our on-going struggles with the Colorado Potato Beetle and blight also limits the crop that comes out of the ground during harvest.  (What happens if we get too much?  We'll let you know when it happens... ;)  We eat a lot of potatoes!)  

Don't be afraid to re-evaluate each year.

     Once you have a few years worth of experience built up you will quickly find that you may be pawning off zucchini or eggplant on your neighbor every year, stuck without lettuce for three months at a time, or having to buy onions at the grocery store as soon as you put your onion sets into the ground.  It's okay!  It's part of the learning experience of trial and error.  At the end of every (major) growing season we sit down and do a quick evaluation of what we need and what we have too much of, then we adjust our planting totals to try and do better next year.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes, as is in the case of 400 pea plants, it fails miserably. Just remember...

There is ALWAYS next year!

Canning Season

An evening's harvest

     Things are a little crazy around here as the summer harvest begins to come in, and the deep freezes and canning shelves overflow. We've just entered Week 3 of canning season, and as I was putting away some of the newly canned goods (Sweet Pickles from Week 1, and Bread & Butter Pickles and Sweet Pickle Relish from Week 2), I realized something... 

     No, it has nothing to do with the amount of cucumbers we're swimming in. Well, actually, I take that back, it just might. It also has to do with all the cabbage, tomatoes and peppers, and all the not-so-blank spaces on our canning shelves as we expand to can even more of our own foods each year. You see, we're not going to have enough room for all of our canned goods this year.

     I was concerned last week about running out of freezer space after having to dedicate another compartment to chicken scraps.  (Two whole compartments of one of our 15 cubic foot deep freezes are now almost full with vegetables/fruits for the chickens this winter, and before it's all said and done, a third compartment might be added as well to make sure we have enough for them.)  

     Now, with the lack of space for canned goods, some serious rearranging is going to need to take place, because figuring out where to store canned goods is not quite as easy as everyone thinks as this is our year's supply worth of food essentially being "purchased" at one time.  (Take a look at "You Plan To Eat All That?" if you don't believe me.)  

     Some days a weekend "shopping trip" to purchase this year's worth of food seems more reasonable.  I often wonder why it should take an entire "season" to can everything you need.  Why can't we just all jam it into a couple of days and be done with it all?  

Canning weekend of 2015

     Spoiler: Don't do this.  Once a year I get this brilliant idea and jam peaches, apples and tomato products into one weekend in August just to get them all over with.  Every year I come up for air exhausted and swear I'll never do it again.  This year, I've bypassed most of that stage and am making plans for a "relaxing" canning weekend containing all these products again from the fiery depths of my kitchen in August...

     This early summer has been the year of pickles for me.  The cucumber plants are (for once) doing what they are supposed to do, even though we have an outbreak of striped cucumber beetles to deal with.

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
fermenting to make Sauerkraut

     So far we have a batch of Sweet Pickles done, with another batch fermenting.  There's Sweet Pickle Relish canned (recipe here), and also a batch of the simplest pickle I can find: Bread & Butter Pickles.  To top it all off, Sauerkraut is also fermenting alongside the Sweet Pickles right now, and I'm about to have to thoroughly rearrange the kitchen for canning season soon as from here on out, it is expected that I will be canning (at bare minimum) one recipe each week until October.  That's at least twelve weeks of canning (and a lot more than twelve recipes worth of things that will need canned)!

     I'm not quite sure how many more cucumbers we'll need this year, so our chickens might get lucky and have some extra cucumbers to pick at instead of just cabbage heads, broccoli, cauliflower, beet tops and radishes.  I'm sure they won't mind.

The Plymouth Barred Rock also pecking at some Watermelon rinds.

In Other News

Did you say food?  Our Delawares are the least picky
chickens I have ever seen when it comes to food.  

     To complete the cycle of chaos around here, the Delawares are begging for their own pasture (and three escaped their run in search of grass when I went to change out their water the other day, so we really need to get their pasture done).  Chicken chasing is not all that it is cracked up to be.  

    With temperatures climbing into the 90s for almost a whole week now, they and the Plymouth Barred Rocks have been getting mud puddle filled runs to help keep them cool, and they are loving it!  They have also been keeping us on our toes as we change out their water multiple times throughout the day and keep an eye on whether or not they are getting heat stressed.  In all the twenty-two chickens seem to be doing fairly well considering the temperatures.

Baling Straw on July 4th before the rains came.  The Mr. is
sitting out there in the tractor, waiting to get a wagon.

     The Mr. has been helping out our landlord occasionally with the hay and straw harvests this year, and my cousin who was visiting from North Carolina and I got to watch everyone try to get the straw bales in before the rains came on the Fourth of July.  The rains, which were supposed to only arrive in the evening, came early (around 2 p.m.), and sent everyone, along with their wagons, running for cover.   Fortunately, we live in the country, and the July Fourth weekend also gave us 18 different fireworks displays, which we watched from the sand mound.

We will also be working on replacing the greenhouse roof
before winter as a windstorm late last week ripped it to shreds.

     As we started to harvest our summertime produce, we planted a late season crop of Incredible Sweet Corn, and are now planning for our fall crops in the garden.  Just this past week our seed starter trays were filled with Winter Dream Cauliflower, Sun King Broccoli, Red Acre Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage and Blue Curled Scotch Kale seeds.   The seeds are currently waiting out the weather on the porch, where I can keep them easily watered, and will hopefully be moved to the greenhouse once needed adjustments are made to it.  Soon we'll harvest the rest of the cabbage and begin planting some of our fall season seeds.

Crops Being Harvested

July: Black Raspberries, Blackberries, Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Cucumbers, Herbs (various), Hull Peas, Lettuce, Mint, Mulberries, Peppers, Radishes, Sugar Beets, Tomatoes, Yellow Squash and Zucchini

Upcoming in August: Blackberries, Broccoli, Cabbage, Cucumbers, Herbs (various) Lettuce, Lima Beans, Mint, Oats, Patty Pan Squash, Peppers, Radishes, Sugar Beets, Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Wineberries, Yellow Squash and Zucchini

Until next time, Happy Harvesting!

Free Up Freezer Space

Is your freezer so full you just don't have room to fit more in?  Are you stuck with a tiny apartment-sized freezer, but would love to prepare meals in advance?  These quick tips will help you make the most of your limited freezer space.

TIP 1: Storing meat.  A family pack of meat runs between 5 and 6lbs, which is perfect for this quick tip.  

Instead of keeping your meat in its original packaging, separate it immediately into portion-sized packages.  To do this we use fold top sandwich bags (cost is about $1 per 100-pack at a big box store) and gallon-sized freezer bags (cost is around $7 per 50-pack at a big box store).  A 1/2lb of ground meat can easily fit inside a fold over sandwich bag, fold the top over, and then pack 12 of those packages into a gallon-size freezer bag, label the bag, and stack.  When using freezer bags for this purpose, I found that zipper bags hold up better than slider bags due to how tightly they will be packed, and in having to open and close them with regularity.  

TIP 2: Storing soups and sauces.  If you're like us, you probably want to have some quick meals on hand.  We found the best way to do this is to use easily stacking freezer containers for premade soups (such as lentil soup, homemade cream of chicken soup, or chicken pot pie) and sauces that can't be canned.  The key here is to get sturdy freezer containers, which come in a variety of sizes and all stack together nicely.  The ones we have, shown right, actually come in three sizes (2 cup, 3 cup and 4 cup), and have a place where you can write in the date and contents with a dry erase marker.  Once you're done with them, wash them up, and they're good as new!  We got ours for just $3.50 for 2 cup (5-pack), a 3-cup (4-pack) or 4-cup (3-pack) from a local store.  

TIP 3: Flatten when you're able with soups, crockpot freezer meal packets, and vegetables.   This works wonderful when we are trying to jam as much garden produce into our freezers (yes, we have deep freezes these days, but started out with just an apartment-sized freezer) as possible.  Essentially, you're making file folders out of pint freezer bags (around $3 for a 20-pack at a big box store) and quart freezer bags (about $7 for a 60-pack at a big box store).  Label your bags, freeze your bags flat, after insuring all the air is out of them, and then stack like you would file folders in a filing cabinet.  You can also stack them inside freezer bins if you have them.  When using freezer bags, I've found that regular zipper bags hold up better than slider bags.

TIP 4: TV dinners for all.  When tv dinners first became popular in the 1950s, the frozen dinners came in an aluminium tray, which you heated in an oven and actually ate on a tv tray in front of the television with the rest of your family.  They were popular, and eventually became the plastic tray'd meals that we see in grocery store freezer cases today.  We currently make a spin of family-sized tv dinners using aluminium pans from the big box stores, which you can pick up for a couple of dollars.  Take the lid off, and pop them into the oven, and you're ready for a quick dinner while you clean up from the garden, or catch up on some housework.

The aluminium pans stack wonderfully in the freezer, and can make a full course meal for two, or a main dish for more than two, whereas the small loaf pans make great single serve meals or a side dish for two.  The key, is to get only one or two kinds, which stack nicely so you don't use up too much of your freezer space.  If you're careful with the pans you can easily wash and reuse them, although you will have to replace the lids.  (A simple "new" lid can be made from aluminium foil and cardboard.

TIP 5: Use freezer bins/baskets if you have the space.  Not everyone will have the space to use freezer baskets as catch-alls, but I love these plastic baskets with holes in that allow the air to circulate, and can catch all of those half-used bags of vegetables and random single-packs of meat that are floating about.  You'll notice that we use them in our deep freezes for all of our bags of roasts and steaks.

These baskets come in four different sizes, ranging from a shoe box size to almost 11" x 14" x 10", and cost anywhere from $1 to $5 each at big box and dollar stores, depending on the size.  (We actually love them so much that we use them for our produce bins, yarn and craft bins, for all the clothing that doesn't fit nicely into our two dresser drawers, and in organization of our bathroom closet.)

I hope these tips help make some room in your crowded freezers.  What do you do to save space in them?

The "I'd Like To" Game

Yes, that is us (a throwback to 2013) and one of our
many projects: cleaning out the "upper garden" where our
berry patch is.  It's still somewhat overgrown now, but
nothing like it was!  The backbreaking labor we call life.

     I've figured out by now a "normal life," or what the stereotypical "normal life" is, is not, by any means, in the cards for us.  I glance across my social media every morning to see an array of friends, former classmates and colleagues, and family filling us in on the highlights of their lives.  Monday morning is the absolute worst for this as I watch their vacations and weekends flash before my eyes, desperately scrolling to get past them.  After all what is a vacation?  Or, even a weekend?  I don't think we've really seen those for a while.  If you think it's easy to just take off for a few days, let's give you a glimpse at our "I'd like to" game we get to play when we consider one of those two possibilities.  I sure hope someone else out there plays this same game as well... 

     I'd like to sleep in... (A beautiful mini vacation) What that really means is, I'd like to meet this face when I come to the door.  It's one of our farm cats Purrball, and a not very happy one, because I missed his stomach clock.  I know what you're thinking, "It's just a cat," but, you don't understand, he knows how to turn the rooster on me (and that thing will not shut up once he does). 

     I'd like to go away for the weekend... Um... you do realize we have animals right?  (Can you imagine eight disgruntled cats meeting us on the doorstep?)  Our going away for the weekend means loading the animal feed and water up and praying for two days that we have enough, while we have a relative on speed dial if there's an emergency (or if we get stuck in traffic).  That's only in fair weather conditions though.  If it's too hot, their water has to be changed multiple times a day.  If it's too cold and their water freezes, then the ice has to be broken and the water has to be changed, whenever the ice begins to form (multiple times a day).  There's also that garden, that needs harvested (which can usually be put off for just two days if need be), but the watering can't.  We went away for a weekend this past summer, just when the sweet corn was forming.  They were calling for rain, so we weren't too worried.  The showers missed us, and we were now two hours away without the real ability to say "we'll just run back home and throw the sprinkler on."  Yup, we planted 600 stalks of sweet corn.  We got about three dozen "edible to us" ears off of it.  Everything else went to the chickens.  Totally worth the weekend right?  

What a normal day of tomatoes looks like and what could
be spoiling in the garden if no one takes notice.

     I'd like to take a vacation... Ahhh, spending more than two days away, sounds relaxing doesn't it?  Yup, but that prep work is going to be awful.  It involves multiple steps before we can even get out the door, which includes (a) harvesting anything from the garden that is "ripe enough" to harvest and that will be ripe while your away, (b) finding someone willing to watch the farm cats and change their food and water once a day, (c) this same person will also be doing the same to the chickens and checking for eggs, (d) and they'll be watering the garden too, (e) and they'll probably be harvesting the crops that weren't ripe enough when will left, but now are.  Their daily visit to your house, on a good day when everything runs smoothly, will take them 30 minutes, but in reality it will be more like an hour (especially if they don't understand your daily chores as well as you).  Planning on staying away longer than a week?  Make sure that person is willing to clean out the chicken coop and preserve your harvest that is now decaying because even though it's harvested, something still needs done with it.  

     I'd like to relax this evening... (A mini-weekend if you will)  Ha!  Good one.  What that actually means is, I'd like to ignore the garden that either needs weeded or harvested, and if we don't do either, we lose our crops and therefore our food.  Have you ever watched tomatoes rot on the vine because you didn't have enough time or energy left to harvest them?  It's extremely depressing (to say the least), and by taking this mini weekend, you might as well be throwing the tomatoes (and whatever else needs harvesting) to the compost bin.  

     In the end you may be saying I'd like to have a normal life, but what is a "normal life" after all?  To us, this is becoming the new normal.  Two years ago, there were no animals to worry about, but a garden.  Three years ago there were only a few container vegetables to have to try to keep alive on my soon-to-be-husband's balcony, but were we as happy then as we are now?  We've grown closer together with this new life we have, and although we really can't sleep in, or take a vacation (no matter how long it may be), or even truly have a carefree relaxing evening without having to worry about some little chore that isn't getting done, why would we want anything else?  

     Now, if you'll excuse me I have some work, scratch that, life to tend to.