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!

Gad-Cukes!

"Examine preserves [in storage], to see that they are not contracting mould; and your pickles, to see that they are not growing soft and tasteless."

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      Anyone else feeling a little tired lately?  It must be harvesting season, or canning season, or freezing season, or dehydrating season… hmm… maybe this is why I’m feeling a little tired.  Last week, I had the fortunate of walking out to our cucumber plants for the first time in my life, and harvesting cucumbers to process!  Then I had a few days where those cucumbers sat in a basket in my fridge and telling me to “process us quickly, before something else comes up!”  Looks like I better listen to those talking cucumbers because that sweet corn sure is coming in fast now! 

      Our first cucumber crop is looking to me like a batch of sweet pickle relish (and some bread and butter pickles)!  It’s not that we don’t like pickles (only I do actually, the husband can’t stand them), but some of our family members love the relish that we give as Christmas gifts with other goodies each year.  So before the day heated up, I headed out into the kitchen for some canning!  If you’d like to follow along and can some of your own sweet pickle relish, I’ve added the directions below. 

Ingredients:

• 6 cups seeded and finely chopped pickling cucumbers (We have “pickle barrel” cucumbers in the garden, so I ended up using five big ones and getting about 6 cups worth)
• 3 cups finely chopped onion (In my case that meant one big candy onion we had downstairs)
• 3 cups of seeded and finely chopped green and red sweet peppers (I used some from the freezer, and mixed together whatever I could find of the two since our pepper plants aren’t at the harvesting stage yet.  I usually try to go heavy on the red pepper for pretty, but couldn’t find enough of it to do so this year.  If you didn't notice, we're canning with what's on hand right now.)
• ¼ cup of pickling salt
• Cold water
• 3 cups granulated cane sugar (We prefer to use granulated sugar made with sugar cane instead of sugar beets, which are more likely to be GMOs.  You can find out on your bag whether you have sugar cane sugar or sugar beet sugar)
• 2 cups cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons celery seeds
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

Directions:

Step 1: Scrub clean the cucumbers with a vegetable brush.  We actually have a carrot brush, which works wonderfully, thanks to one of the volunteers who gave out very meaningful Christmas gifts to all the staff members at a former job.  (She pegged what we’d like!  Our gift was all fun cooking stuff!).

Step 2: Start to multi-task, as I fill a water bath canner in the sink and start to get it up to temp on the stove by heating it on a lower setting as it will take a little while before I actually need it, I also start to finely dice and deseed the cucumbers.  Sure, you could use a chopper or food processor, but as some relatives and friends probably think by now, I must be a glutton for punishment as I hand chop them all.  For some reason, my mother taught me that chopping vegetables could be a joy – a task that I liked to take over when making lentil soup as a child.  Thinking back, perhaps she had some ulterior motives for this… All the “scraps” that I can’t use are going to the chickens.  (P.S. – All this hand chopping could take a while so pull out the laptop and turn on a video and try to pass the time.  I just happened to enjoy a very interesting BBC series on Edwardian farming on YouTube.)

Step 3: Finely chop onions.  (We discard our “scraps” to the compost bin bucket for these.) 

Step 4:  Finely chop peppers. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with these peppers, they just happen to have frost on them from the freezer.  Thawing them just a little, but not entirely, makes them easier to cut. (We discard our “scraps” to the compost bin bucket for these.) 

Step 5: Combine all the vegetables and pickling salt into a pot or bowl and cover with cold water.  Let sit at room temperature for 2 hours.  Take a break!  (Actually, in my case, I started slicing cucumbers and onions and chopping garlic for bread and butter pickles as they chill for 3 to 12 hours in the refrigerator, so I could can them while the canner was hot.)

Step 6: Drain and rinse the vegetables in a colander under cold water in the sink.  Then return to the pot on the stovetop and add your spices, sugar and vinegar.  Bring it to a boil and reduce heat, allowing it to simmer for about 20 minutes or until about half the liquid is boiled off.  Make sure to stir occasionally or it could stick to the bottom!

Step 7: Ladle quickly into prepared jars, leaving a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of headspace on each jar.  (For some reason, it seems I never have enough hands available to remember to take a photograph of this step.)  Wipe rims clean and place lids and bands on tightly.  Process jelly jars for 10 minutes in a water bath canner.  Remove from the canner.  Place jars, upright, on cookie racks or clean dish towels to cool for at least 24 hours.

Yields approximately 8 jelly jars (8oz.).

And last, but not least – label the jars and load up the pantry!  Where am I putting these?  Oh, wait… there’s an empty spot!  Just let me shift a few things around… there.  DONE!  (At this point is where you can imagine a cartoon version of me standing back proudly examining my handy work as the cucumbers grow with profusion on the vine outside the window, about to explode at any moment.  And yes, a few short days later, it looks like we’ll have to be canning again soon.) 

 What have you been canning lately?