Fall crops are up!

When I pulled the garlic from my kitchen garden, at the end of July, I immediately started prepping that space for fall crops. Garlic harvests best when the soil is dry, so that soil was very dry. I added a couple of buckets of compost, and roughly hoed that in a little. Then a bunch of water, (the kids wanted to play in a sprinkler, it was a win-win operation.)  Then I  seeded Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, the last of the onion sets that were still in a plantable state, some green beans, white turnips and Cylindra beets. It might sound like a lot, but there's only 2-3 feet of each one.

Thanks to a week of rain and a waxing super moon, I had GREAT germination on all of them, and with any luck, it will be a welcome wave of fresh veggies at the end of the season.  I'll be curious to see if the beans will have enough time to produce, they are bush beans, so I only need them to put on that first big flush.

Worst case, they'll shade out some weeds and be interesting from a research/trial-and-error stance.  But I'm betting at least half will give me food. That Swiss Chard and Kale will probably give me food well into winter, they are both super hardy.

Some notes for future reference. No onion sets for sale this late in the season. Keep more onion sets in a dry dark location after spring plantings. That means I have to buy enough in the spring so I'll have leftovers that I can plant in fall. And actually get them into a safe place. I had probably 3 little bags of sets this year leftover, but one got wet during a watering "incident" that soaked my whole gardening basket, so it rotted. One was left in a sunny place and sprouted, then rotted.  Only one was in a dry dark place, and of course, that was totally by accident.

Other food related things going on, include a bunch of canning. Dave has really stepped into the lead on preservation work, but we still work together on most batches.  We've done a couple rounds of zucchini relish. Bread and Butter pickles are still to do this week.  Some sweet corn next week. We've dried a lot of herbs. Tons of oregano, some mint and parsley.

I don't know if we'll get a tomato glut this year, it's been so mild, there are barely enough heat units to ripen anything. I'll just have to wait and see how the rest of August plays out.

Sharing the Canning Fun

We've been doing lots of canning the past few years. I've gotten better at gardening, and at finding local veggies and fruit when they are in season. I've also been gifted boxes of jars regularly which helps immensely. I have bought some too, but I've been amazed at how many jars found their way to me when I started to tell people that I was a canner. Out of basements and attics of people who are passed their canning hey-day. (Thanks Grandma Dee Dee!)

I have to give credit where credit is due. I can't do it all. Dave has stepped up and has helped a lot with the processing and preserving this year. I couldn't do it without him. Between 2 jobs, volunteer work and the garden I just don't have time to salt cucumbers for 3 hours for tasty Bread & Butter pickles, not if I want to sleep too. :-D Asking for help has never been a strong suit, and there are hiccups when we do things differently than the other would, but overall I think we do a pretty good job of working together. Often a job will start with me in the morning, then pass to Dave in the afternoon, then be completed by me in the evening. The drawbacks to this arrangement are obvious, more chances for something to get missed. We've found that lists and lots of notes help with communication. The benefit is that even with the miss-steps, we get a lot more done, things that neither of us could do alone.

I have found the time to teach my canning skills to a friend here. She promised to take me out bow hunting in exchange for a canning lesson or two. (Yay barter!) I invited her over for the whole tomatoes, which are easy because I like to raw pack them, but at the same time we got to go through the pressure canning process which was really intimidating to her. She was pleasantly surprised by how easy things were, and how straightforward the instructions were in the little canning booklet. I told her about the tools I like to have, and which instructions are more important than others. (Spices can be tweaked, PH can not. )

Keeping in touch with experienced canners has helped too. This is a bit of a challenge since I live half a continent away from my grandmothers. I have canned a few times with my mother, and that's always a joy. My neighbor is a canner, and I'm using her salsa recipe right now. But, mostly I rely on the internet to keep me in touch with other canners, to swap recipes and get inspiration.
Food in Jars
Punk Domestics
Local Kitchen


There's always new things to try. New recipes and new tools. It's hard work, but I enjoy most of it. I really enjoy the home canned goodness in the long winters.

Totals so far:
4 pints of sweet corn (there's still a lot left from last year)
5 quarts of applesauce
7 quarts of whole tomatoes
5 pints of garlic dill pickles
6 pints of Bread & Butter pickles

We have a box of tomatoes/peppers and a large bag of green beans waiting patiently for their turn in the canner.

Lughnasadh

Well, Lughnasadh is Saturday, the celebration of the harvest, specifically grain, and we are definitely harvesting here in zone 4 Iowa. The sweet corn crop is in, and it's divine. My mother was coming for a 2 day stay to help with a child care need and she brought a whole bushel (65 ears) of the sweet gold. The two of us spent most of the day yesterday shucking, shelling and canning pint jars of corn. Rowen helped too of course, but he was much more interested in playing with the silks. Mom prefers to freeze her stash, which she did last week, so most of the canned stuff will go to my stores but some will be given as return gifts to our southern relatives who happily send us jars of their excess beans. The best part is they think we're spoiling them by sending down corn. :-) We ate corn on the cob for dinner last night and probably will again tonight. Mmmmmm... :-)

As much as I enjoy living on my own, I do love having my mother around. It reminds me of the living arrangements in India (and other countries), where elders live with the younger generation and help with food and child care. It reminds me of my childhood and having breakfast with Mom before starting my day. It eases the loneliness of living in a new town that's both smaller and more rural than I'm used to. For her part I'm hoping she's enjoying the grandbaby time and vacation from her day-to-day routine. The visit is all that and more and, as with the best things, greater than the sum of it's parts.

The best thing about canning, in my opinion, is that it almost forces you to do a lot of something. It is possible to can a half dozen ears really quick in one batch, but if you're going to be at the corn stand, shucking, shelling and messing around with the jar stash, it's definitely worth your time to do more than one canner load. Which equates to a large deposit into the pantry. Going to the store to buy 40 cans of corn might get you looked at funny, and depending on the quality might set you back 30-40 bucks. The whole bushel of corn from the farm truck was 22$. Lids are maybe another 2$. Less than 25$ all said (plus some time and sweat) and I have 21 pint jars of top quality sweet corn.
It's almost time to do the same with green beans. :-D I didn't have space this year to plant a large enough patch of green beans to can, so I'll have to get them from the farmers market this Saturday. No hardship there, even the small market we have in our new town has some excellent choices for staples like green beans.

I also love how canning connects me closer to the wheel of the year. Even in high summer I've got an eye on winter's cold, and in deepest winter the jars of summer goodness help me remember that spring will come again.

So this weekend I hope to light a bonfire and reflect for a moment on the bounty around me. For I am blessed in family, blessed in health and blessed with lots to can. So, perhaps only a small moment of reflection, as there's much to do!