I have done more canning this year than any year in the last 45.
I have made strawberry jam, raspberry jam, and strawberry-rhubarb jam. I bought strawberries from Carpinito’s and grew raspberries and rhubarb here in the garden. It was a banner year.
I canned 12 quarts of cherries and 14 quarts of apricots that Duvan brought us from Yakima.
I bought twenty pounds of little cucumbers at Carpinitos and canned dill pickles. I canned bread and butter pickles using Mary Bratovich’s recipe..
I picked zucchini from our garden and canned zucchini relish using Elaine’s recipe.
Amy brought asparagus from Moses Lake and with the girls we pickled asparagus and canned it.
Duvan brought apples from Yakima and I dried 6 quarts of apple slices. I also dried basil and cilantro and lavender from the garden.
I canned figs and nectarines and peaches.
Joe and I picked all the figs from our three trees, standing on the roof and high ladders, and I dried figs like Nonna used to do with cinnamon and almonds. Except I didn’t dry them on screens on the roof, I used a dehydrator.
I canned 12 pints of fig chutney and apple chutney.
I got 30 pounds of tomatoes from Selah through our farm share and canned them for sauce.
We strung nets over the grapes to keep the birds away, then in late September harvested 150 pounds of Glenora grapes and a scanty 30 pounds of Regent grapes to deliver to Don Pruett for wine making. Meanwhile we drank wine from the 2019 batch and used red wine vinegar in our chutneys.
I got 20 pounds of plums from Lind Moe’s d dried them into 7 quarts of sweet dried plums.
And then there’s the freezer. I froze baggies of strawberries and raspberries. I froze several loaves of chocolate zucchini bread using the gargantuan zucchinis from the garden. And the coup de gras— our 300 pounds of beef, after butchering our big fat cow and getting our cuts ordered from Olsen’s Meats.
This should carry us through Smoke, Murder hornets, wild fires, Coronavirus, 92 degree heat, lockdown, and who knows what else. We can be pretty self sufficient if the well doesn’t go dry.