I love to garden! There is something about growing things that is very soothing to the soul. One of my yearly gardens is a very large vegetable garden. In addition to the vegetables I grow, my father has a number of fruit trees and berry bushes. This year our garden didn’t do very well, a dry spell right after we planted delayed the germination for a few weeks. Then the summer turned cool and rainy. It does seem like it will be a good year for carrots though, mine are still in the ground at the moment but I am planning to pick them this weekend (before the forecast snow!)
The beans did come from our garden. I was able to can 24 quarts, though the yellow beans are a bit tough. We would have had a much bigger harvest, but the rabbits kept nibbling down the plants. They seemed to prefer the green bean plants, that is after they finished off all the broccoli and 
cauliflower plants I put in.
This was the first year I ever canned my beans, I usually just freeze them. But I already had a shelf full of frozen blueberries and a drawer full of applesauce I froze last year. When I was a new bride I bought some berries to make jam. I knew I would need a big pot to seal the jars in, so I went out to a local store to buy a canner. I was stunned at the price they were charging ($60!), but I bought it anyway. When I got home, I called my mom who cleared up my confusion. I had bought a pressure canner, rather than just a boiling water bath canner. I have used that pot for the last 18 years to seal my jars with boiling water, mostly because the pressure regulator went missing when we moved here 18 years ago. I finally ordered a new one this year and tried my hand at pressure canning.
I always can jams and jellies. Ed is a peanut butter and jelly fanatic! In fact, he even makes “gourmet PB&J”, which is simply PB&J on toast but he loves it. He puts PB&J on a tortilla for a wrap, he eats it made with bagels and English muffins.
Every year I make about 30 pints. This year I had some strawberry left from last year, but I made blueberry and blackberry from berries I had in the freezer. I also will probably make some grape jelly from the concord grapes that grow wild on our property.
I also took some of the blueberries I picked this year along with some of the berries from the freezer and made some fruit syrups.
I made strawberry syrup, blueberry syrup and blueberry/raspberry syrup. The boys love them. Next year I’ll have to make more!
Every year I buy a bushel or two of tomatoes from our local farmers’ market and make tomato sauce. This year was no exception. I canned 20 quarts of diced tomatoes and 25 quarts of tomato sauce this year. I also made 20 pints of salsa using a mix I have had in my cupboard, it turned out a little thin though so I will be looking for a new recipe next year. I have a recipe for chili sauce that I got from my grandmother, I wonder if I change the spices a bit if it would make a good salsa. I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to find out.
My oldest son, Ger, really loves hot sauce! He has tried all different brands and uses it like his brother, Mic, uses ketchup. This year we found a recipe to make our own, which we thought we would try. 
We bought everything the recipe said we would need, including the hot peppers, and Ger set about making the hot sauce. I know in many families the canning is always done be the women. But in my family the men do their share of the canning too. My great grandfather made an awesome peach jam, unfortunately he took the recipe to the grave with him and I’ve heard stories about his horseradish (apparently he was the only one who would stay in the house while it was cooking!) My grandfather helped my grandmother with all her canning, including his chili sauce. Now that Grandpa has gone home, Dad has taken over the chili sauce tradition. Dad even tried his hand at horseradish once, and yes, we all left the house!
So Ger made his hot sauce this year. And of course, being 15, he knew better than Mom and didn’t wear gloves while chopping the hot peppers. We did discover that Tecnu poison ivy soap works pretty well to remove the oil from your skin, better than anything else we tried. After the sauce the cooked, he tasted and decided it wasn’t hot enough. This time when he chopped the second bunch of hot peppers, he wore gloves.
We were completely out of relish this summer too, so I bought cucumbers and made a double batch of Grandma’s relish (the pint jars in the corner of the picture above.) A double batch was a bit overkill though. We won’t need relish for a long time! Grandma’s relish recipe is for green tomato relish, but it makes an awesome pickle relish too!
The problem is that making relish takes a lot of spices! I have found 2 great sources for spices, both have very reasonable prices. The first is Lantz’s Bulk Foods, a Mennonite bulk food store about an hour or so from my house in Warsaw, NY. I buy a lot of my pantry staples there, unbleached flour, oatmeal, beans, rice, cream of wheat etc. Their prices on spices are amazing! And they have awesome instant cappuccino mixes. They also have a deli with various meats and cheeses and a lunch counter. When we go, we always plan on having lunch there, the boys love their cheeseburger subs. For those of you who may not have a bulk food store nearby, Atlantic Spice has great prices on spices. The only catch is that they are sold by the pound and they have a $30 minimum order.
An Amish farm near my parents was selling peaches for $10 a bushel, unfortunately there was
a terrible storm before I could get over there to buy some. So I bought some from the farmers’ market for $18 a half bushel. I was able to can 24 quarts of peaches, but I didn’t make any jam. I did find a recipe to make “peach honey” from the peels which seemed like it would have been similar to peach jelly, but I ended up burning it. Next year I think I will use a recipe for plum jelly any try to make peach jelly.
Now it’s apple season. Unfortunately, we had a very late snow fall this spring which killed the apple blossoms on our trees. But the vendors at the market have loads of apples for reasonable prices. I have made 7 quarts of apple pie filling so far, but I ran out of jars. Fortunately the store my husband works for now carries jars, so I have to run over there and buy a box so I can finish up the apples I have sitting in my kitchen. I want to get back over to the market and pick up another bushel so I can make another 10 quarts of pie filling. We don’t eat a lot of pies, but I use the filling to make apple crisps, a yummy dessert pizza, apple cobbler and a bunch of other things. I hope I’ll be able to make apple butter too, the boys love it on toast.
I grew several heads of cabbage this year which I used to make sauerkraut. It should be ready to can next week. I hope it turns out, it’s the first time I have tried making it and I’m not sure how well it fermented. But then again I don’t know what I’m looking for. I will also be canning some of the carrots, though I hope to be able to keep some in a cool spot. We brought our onions in a few weeks ago, and they are drying waiting to be braided. We also have a few squash that we have picked, and I hope we can get a few more.
Like I said, he is rarely in his pen. He seems to prefer to be with people, at least he follows us into whatever room we are in. He also loves to go outside, and Mic takes him out as the weather allows. But it has been cool and rainy recently, so Max has had to be satisfied with wandering around the house. It actually reminds me of the days when we had a crawling baby, we need to remember to shut the door to the basement and every once in awhile we look up and realize that we don’t know where Max is! Unlike a crawling baby though, a 4 inch tortoise is difficult to find. He can fit into small places (like behind the guitar stand) and if you are not looking carefully he blends in with things. I decided to circle him in this picture rather than have you play “Find the Tortoise” and it is still not easy.
