Breezee BarnsYou know the saying, when it rains, it pours? Well by golly our tomato plants went crazy!!! We started working on canning the tomatoes towards the end of August and we finally finished up with them in the last few of September weeks. Our goal was to get them out of the garden since the fall weather is cooling things off around here.
Fresh tomatoes from the garden are the best. They just taste so much better than what you can buy at the grocery store. We were having lots of cucumber tomato salads and just plain tomatoes with salt and pepper. We were not the only ones that benefited from all the fresh tomatoes. The chickens, ducks and turkeys would get treats as well. They really enjoyed getting a batch of tomatoes to munch on. Eventually, we just had so many, we just couldn’t keep up, so we turned to canning them.
Stewed Tomatoes and Tomato Juice
We started by just canning stewed tomatoes and tomato juice. Just like canning beets, the process for canning stewed tomatoes takes time. You need to blanch the tomatoes, then peel the tomatoes, then chop the tomatoes and cook them down in the stock pot (similar to this one), depending on how you were processing them. Once you get all that done, it is finally time to start canning the tomatoes. This is a project that took most of the afternoon to do, so we had to make sure we had the time available before we started. There are a few days, Aunt T did the canning without the girls or I around, so kudos to her for keeping things going! As time went on, we ended up making salsa and spaghetti sauce.
For several days, Uncle D would work on picking tomatoes. As he picked tomatoes, he pulled the plants out of the ground. By the time he was done, we had tomatoes everywhere! Aunt T and Uncle D had buckets and boxes all over (these pictures do not even begin to show how much we were working with). Boxes were in the mud room, on the steps to the house, on kitchen counter and even the sink was filled. I would take some home with me and work on tomatoes when I could.
Salsa Time
I made a different salsa than Aunt T. I made two batches of salsa. One was mild and the other a little bit spicier (personally, I think it could use a few more jalapeños). I am actually very impressed that I was able to can salsa. It wasn’t hard, just time-consuming. I did enlist the help of one of the girls to help chop peppers and onions, but other than that, I did the rest. All in all, I ended up with 14 pints of salsa and the rest that didn’t get put in jars, got eaten up quickly! I know I must be doing something right when my children come home and tell me the house smells like salsa! Only time will tell if we made enough salsa to get us through to next season.
Spaghetti Sauce
Canning spaghetti sauce was another new adventure for me. I told Aunt T Ithat would help her and just like everything else, it was another long afternoon. Aunt T had started everything before I got to her place (I was finishing up making pumpkin muffins for the girls). I jumped in and finished chopping the celery since everything else was done, except for the tomatoes. I don’t know the exact number of tomatoes that were blanched and peeled, but I do know the second batch had 86 tomatoes in it (the recipe called for 2 gallons of tomatoes). Once all the tomatoes were peeled and chopped, they all went back into the big pot along with all the seasonings and other ingredients (bell peppers, onions, celery). Now began the waiting game. All the ingredients had to be cooked together for around 3 hours and had to be constantly stirred.
The aroma that we could smell from the spaghetti sauce was amazing. The whole house smelled so good. After a while, Aunt T pulled out some sourdough bread and I got to taste test the sauce. Oh my, it was so yummy!
Finally, the time was up, and we put the sauce in jars that were cleaned and hot, sealed the jars with the seals and rings that were heated as well and placed them on the counter to sit. We ended up with 11 quarts of spaghetti sauce. The girls will need to try it and determine if we will be making more next year.
Tomatoes Finished
Needless to say, we were super excited to finally get those tomatoes done. We were tired of seeing tomatoes everywhere! Aunt T and Uncle D sure had a lot more to look at since the majority of them were at their place. They finally got their counters back!!
I think we have all come to the conclusion that we won’t plant as many plants next year. As much as we love having fresh tomatoes, we do not want to be overwhelmed like we were this year. It was not terrible. It just takes a lot of time and patience. Standing most of the day and working in kitchen sure takes a toll on your back. One benefit is that none of us got hurt to the point that we could not help with the canning season. Yes, in the past few years, Aunt T has ended up getting hurt or sick so Uncle D did most of the canning with the supervision of Aunt T. We were so grateful she did not get hurt or sick this year!! Aunt T knows her stuff and we need her to stay healthy so we can learn from her!
Learning Something New
Learning to can has been a blessing this year. I am grateful to learn something new that benefits my whole family. We now have a few extra items in our pantries and storage rooms going into the winter months. We have always keep extra food on hand because you just never know what can happen. With all that we have canned, we should have a good idea of how long it will last and what we need to do next year. This year was just an experiment. Next year we will have try something different and see what results we get. It is all about learning from each experiment and making it better each time. One day we will find what works best for our family.
