Does anyone do any canning? Today was the start to our canning season. Everyone has been harvesting grapes and we’ve started making juice to be used for jelly and drinking.
We are skipping the grape wine this year due to a bit of a over stock situation. But we will probably do some pear wine and pear jelly if there is enough fruit to harvest.
Anyone else? Salsa perhaps?
Jon.
Jon Foster said:
Does anyone do any canning? Today was the start to our canning season. Everyone has been harvesting grapes and we've started making juice to be used for jelly and drinking.We are skipping the grape wine this year due to a bit of a over stock situation. But we will probably do some pear wine and pear jelly if there is enough fruit to harvest.
Anyone else? Salsa perhaps?
Jon.
Did a lot of canning when I was a teen in Pa. Now my current former veggie garden (and workshop and equipment sheds) has been raped by the gubmint to become a six lane toll hiway no one but twitterring, Prius driving idjits can afford to drive. (was that me or Steve saying that?)
-Brian ( i think?!?)
We’re just about done for the night. It’s about 2:30 AM here. The last batch of juice is cooling so I can make one final press. Then we’ll do it again tomorrow.
Ralph, sorry about the apple tree. I wish we had a decent apple tree here. We buy them too but they are so expensive we always end up buying the cheaper varieties. I also have a row of Currents that I’ve never been able to get fruit from. The birds manage to get everything before I can every year. And the kids do a number on the Raspberries too. Actually, one of our dogs has been caught pulling Raspberries off the bushes and eating them one at a time. Damn dog. He’s also the one I taught to open doors thinking it would be funny. Ya, tons of laughs until he walks into the bathroom to see what’s taking you so long.
Brian, you lost the entire garden area to a new road? That sucks! That must have been a pretty fair amount of land to loose. Sorry.
Jon.
We used to. Got tired of it as it seemed the harvest usually arrived with the hottest weather of the summer. Didn’t seem like we were saving all that much on the grocery bill either. I could work a few hours overtime and make up the difference.
Ken,
You are right that we probably don’t save money by canning.
After all, a jar of jelly or a can of beans is pretty cheap.
But we do eat much better food.
Now, if I had to buy everything we canned fresh throughout the year,
it would be costly.
And it is always hot as hell when the crops start coming in and the canning begins.
Ralph
Over here in the rest of the world we have supermarkets.
They actually sell stuff ready-canned.
They’ll save ya’ll a whole heap o’ time and effort. 
tac
www.ovgrs.org
Brian Donovan said:
Did a lot of canning when I was a teen in Pa. Now my current former veggie garden (and workshop and equipment sheds) has been raped by the gubmint to become a six lane toll hiway no one but twitterring, Prius driving idjits can afford to drive. (was that me or Steve saying that?) -Brian ( i think?!?)
:lol: :lol: 
:lol:
Without a doubt it cost us more to can things. Even the stuff we grown has a dollar value to it. But it’s better than the store bought stuff in most cases. One example, I don’t worry about buying a tainted bag of lettuce.
We also make our own soda/pop, beer, wine and mead. We save a ton of cash on this stuff. The only time it’s cheaper to buy soda is when it’s on sale or you buy the no name store brand. Faygo is usually pretty cheap too.
Jon.
Susan mostly froze things, though she’d put pickles, apple butter and the like in mason jars. She’d lie awake all night till she heard all the lids pop down. “That’s 4!”
Tom, I understand the lid thing completely!
Our plans changed a bit yesterday. We finished harvesting grapes and quickly came to the conclusion that we had enough juice from the first day to make enough jelly to last about 10 years. Plus plenty of extra juice to drink or bottle. So, after finishing the harvest yesterday we decided to make a couple more batches of wine. I need to pick up a couple more primaries this morning. We have bags, boxes, pots and piles of grapes in the kitchen and the garage… I hate to let any of it spoil. A few years ago we lost a few hundred pounds of grapes because we ran out of room to store them until we could process them all.
And I have the sexiest blue/purple fingernails this side of the Mississippi!
Jon.
When we lived in Good Hope, there was this ancient grape vine on a falling down trellis. The grapes were very seedy, but wow, what flavor! Susan usually made them into jams and jellies. The juice would definitely start you up in the morning.
I never did any caning but would like to start one dy. I had a garden but with with little ones and work and all my other hobbies I had no time to weed it. We have 4 apple trees, a peach tree, 2 cherry trees, a mulberry tree, rasberry bushes and a ton of wild rasberries and low bush blueberries on my property. We make good use of those. Nothing beats picking rasberries fresh and adding it to some cooked oats with real maple syrup and brown sugar. or blueberries in pancakes. Yum. I also am lucky living out in farm country so we have a lot of local farm stands etc…
When you get use to eating local produce fresh that stuff in the stores taste like crap.
Shawn, you have most of what you need to start canning (the food). Get a Ball Blue Book and read through it. You should be able to find one at any book store, grocery store or department store. Or buy one online. Pretty much everything you need to find out will be in the book. Then decide if it’s something you want to do or not. It does burn up a lot of time but in the middle of winter nothing beats being able to go into the basement and pull out something you canned months ago… Everything you listed in your reply are things you can can/preserve or turn into something tasty that can be canned.
Here’s a link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Blue-Book-of-Preserving/dp/0972753702
Jon.
Susan made some salsa this year. Needs a little more fire.
