There are a great many things I wish to accomplish this year. Today, while I was cleaning up the brew room to make space for more bottles of beer, I came upon a stash of mason jars and remembered one of our family goals.
Canning.
What’s the point of growing fruits and vegetables if you don’t or can’t preserve them for the winter? What’s the point of trying to live sustainably if you aren’t willing to eat last summer’s bounty in the coldness of the winter?
We bought the canning supplies, including a massive pressure-cooker, thinking we’d grow tomatoes or something and would save them for later, even though we can, technically, get everything we need from the grocery store.
So here’s our challenge for the year. Join us if you dare.
The challenge is in two parts:
1) Grow enough vegetables (we’ll probably go with tomatoes, at least initially) that you have too many to eat while they’re still fresh.
2) Can the excess and save it for leaner times.
We haven’t had much success with growing tomatoes for whatever reason, so we’ll redouble our efforts this year. We would prefer to save our own tomatoes. We’ll also think of some other crop that might be worth preserving and give that a shot too.
If we fail at growing tomatoes, or don’t grow sufficient numbers of tomatoes, that’s ok. We’ll hit the local farm market in the fall and purchase enough to preserve.
No matter what happens, we’ll have learned more about what’s involved with getting tomatoes to actually grow on our property and we’ll have at least a few jars of preserved tomatoes to experiment with in the winter.
It seems like a fair challenge, and something imminently do-able. We have a couple of months to decide what we’ll grow and plenty of time to make it work.
Care to join us?
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 