The Season of Preservation

I started off the Season of Preservation with the best of intentions.  I created an excel spreadsheet and planned on updating it each time we canned an item.  This being only our second year of preserving anything, I was very excited about learning how to preserve a small variety of new-to-us items using both our water bath canner and our pressure canner.  The plan was to preserve anything that came from our garden that we couldn’t eat fresh and maybe, if we were lucky, any fruits or veggies given to us by friends or family.  We were thinking we’d maybe fill a single shelf with our home processed goods and that would be “a good start” that we could then build on in future years.

Then, the season was upon us and life was happening and I didn’t write down a single processed can.  Imagine that.  My beautiful (er…useful) excel sheet just sat there (virtually) untouched for months.  That is, until now.  I finally decided it was time to play catch up, so I took my computer out into the garage and then into the pantry with me last night and typed up all of the lovely jars that currently sit on our shelves.  I also reached back into the recesses of my currently school filled brain to recover the items that have been consumed or given away over the past several months.

I thought it might be fun to share the list with you all here.  While we’ve accomplished a lot, (believe it or not) I’ve found my head spinning in a potentially unhealthy/dramatic worry of, “But it’s not enough!  It won’t get us through the winter!”  And then I get sane again…Oh, right…I guess there’s always the grocery store, right?  Ha!  Modern conveniences ROCK!

Anyhow, it’s not perfect, but here’s the list:

Apricot Jam – 3 pints + 10 half pints
Honied Apricots – 4 half pints
Honey Lemon Apple Jam – 5 pints
Apple Sauce – 19 quarts + 16 pints
Apple Butter – 11 pints
Apple Pie in a Jar – 5 quarts
Apple Wedges in Cinnamon Hot Syrup – 10 pints
Boozy Peaches – 1 pint + 7 half pints
Rhubarb (pickled) – 4 pint and a half jars
Rhubarb Jam – 3 half pints
Strawberry Jam – 2 half pints
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam – 7 half pints
Yellow Tomato Basil Jam – 9 half pints

Pickled Rhubarb

Asparagus – 4 pints
Pinto Beans – 42 quarts
Black Beans – 14 pints
Kidney Beans – 14 pints
White Northern Beans – 6 pints
Beets (pickled with ginger) – 4 pints
Carrots – 4 pints + 6 half pints
Corn – 6 pints
Creamed Corn – 6 pints
Green beans – 4 pint and a half jars
Green Chile – 54 pints
Whole Tomatoes – 5 pints
Diced Tomatoes – 4 pints
Tomato Paste – 5 half pints
Zucchini (pickled) – 4 pints

Green (and a little red) Chile

Ketchup – 3 half pints
Relish (Lemon Cucumber) – 4 half pints + 12 quarter pints
Salsa – 8 pints

Vegetable Stew – 5 quarts
Bean & Chicken Stew – 4 quarts

Honey – 2 quarts + 2 pints + 8 pints comb & honey

Honey – not sealed, just jarred 😉

Now, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’re saying to yourself, “What, are they just going to live on sugar all winter long?  That’s a lot of sweet stuff and not a lot of savories!”  Yeah…agreed.  We’re working on it.  We’re not done yet….there will be much more to come as we continue to pull in the fading veggies from the garden in the next few weeks.  However, all those sweets will offer some yumminess to many, many breakfasts and snacks as well as some wonderful additions to baked goods and holiday giveaways!

Mind you, we are not trying to never go the the grocery store again…that is probably never going to happen…at least not anytime soon.  The intention is to simply eat what we grow, learn some new skills and maybe save a little money along the way on our future grocery bills.

This year has been a huge learning curve for us and I would like to be able to take our lessons and use them to plan our plantings and preservations better in future years 🙂  In the meantime, I have to say, it feels really good to walk into the pantry and see all those glowing jars of home grown goodness on our shelves!