Food Storage

Well its already the middle of June and over 2 weeks since my last blog.  I find it hard sometimes to sit down and write about all that we have been doing, but I've felt the push to do it so.....here goes:

Since May we have been busily canning and freezing.  Since we started this canning venture here is a total to date of all we have put away whether canned or frozen:

83 quarts of pickles
21 pints of green beans
13 1/2 pints of jalapenos/serranos
17 quarts of squash
5 quarts of tomatoes
5 quarts of pinto beans

We can't take credit for all the cucumbers coming out of our garden.  My best friend's father has a huge garden and he let us come and harvest as much as we wanted.  I would contribute about 50 quarts from his, so 33 came from ours.  Not bad!!  The cucumbers still keep coming but I think we have enough pickles to last a while so we have been using them for salads, snacks and giving away the rest.

We have run out of room in our pantry so I have boxes of jars stacked in my dining room.  One of hubby's next projects....shelves and canning table for my kitchen.  Pictures will follow as soon as that's done!

 

So as I stated before, we have put up 5 quarts of pinto beans.  This has been my favorite item from our garden.  We have had lots of fun shelling beans as a family.  I even got my teenage daughter to help...how cool is that!

 As you can see on the bottom left of my collage, our garden is looking pretty bare where we harvested the beans.  But...that's the point right?  To harvest.  We still have more out there so I'm hoping to put up about 5 more quarts.  Next year we will definitely plant more pintos now that we know how much it takes to produce what we want!

 I have to remind myself that this is all a learning experience for us and to be grateful and pleased with whatever our garden produces for us.

So not only are we harvesting beans but lots of tomatoes as well!!  There are so many out there that we need to do something with them quick!!  I have frozen 5 quarts of whole tomatoes that I blanched...which by the way is lots of fun.  I still have more in the fridge and more and more and more on the counter in bowls and tons on the vine outside....yikes!!!  It's time to break out the salsa recipe!  My plan is to have a bunch canned by this weekend.

 I have tons more to share about some of the outside projects and fun we have been working on but will have to blog about it another day...maybe tomorrow!  All in all, its been a great month of canning and gardening and the elation we feel building up our food storage is huge!