Mother-daughter canning day
There are a few
homesteading projects I consider important enough to make the cut for
Weekend Homesteader but which I don't personally undertake very
often. The first one was the rain barrel project in the May
volume (which seems
to have started me thinking about rain barrels --- stay tuned for more
on our upcoming rain collection experiment.) The next was canning.
I've canned tomatoes and
applesauce a couple of times before, but I'm not a big fan of the
preservation technique. You have to save up masses of food and
process it all at once, and I just don't think that most foods taste
very good canned. (Tomatoes and apples are the sole
exception.) On the other hand, knowing how to can is a good skill
for any homesteader to have since you don't need to use electricity and
the result will last for multiple years. Plus, canning is so
archetypal that if I asked ten artists to draw a picture of
homesteading, five of them would probably protray canning.
I asked Mom to come over
and help me preserve a load of tomatoes to refresh my memory before
writing up the project for Weekend Homesteader: September. I'm so
glad I did! She bubbled over with so much enthusiasm and
knowledge that I could tell canning had been one of her favorite parts
of living on the land.
I know several people
who can masses of garden produce every year...then don't eat any of
it. After canning with a passionate expert, I understand how the
process could turn into a fun hobby even if you don't like the taste of
the results. The boiling water gets your adrenaline pumping, the
reflective glass and colorful produce sates your eyes, and canning is a
perfect bonding experience if you bring your mom along. Thanks
for doing all the heavy lifting, Mom!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I can't really say I 'love' canning, but I do love the results. I did tomatoes, salsa, peach preserves, strawberry jam, zucchini relish (the best!) and cucumber pickles, both dill and sweet.
I like most vegetables frozen, though, and pray we don't lose power when lightning strikes or ice forms on the power lines. I'd say I do a good mix of both canning and freezing, and haven't yet felt the need to buy a pressure canner.
The deer have found my garden, just in time, as I'm running out of stuff to pick. They don't care for squash, and that's about all that's left!
Debbi --- We have a generator that we can run during power outages. We've found that about half an hour a day during the winter is enough to keep the freezer frozen. In a worst case scenario, I'd probably borrow a friend's pressure canner and go ahead and can a lot of the produce.
The deer can be a catstrophe in the garden. I sympathize!