PUTTING IT UP - PRESERVING THE HARVEST
I'm still at work with my three garden mega-harvest and we're being blessed like crazy!
Not only did the @bluerthangreen family leave their garden under my care, but another neighbor as well, so I've got three gardens to take care of and harvest!
Just in case you missed my excited vlog about watching the three gardens, there's the video!
FOOD FOR THE WINTER!
Now that delicious pile of fresh food isn't exactly going to stay that way. Soon, it'll just rot if we don't do anything with it. Besides enjoying some fresh, we've got to preserve the rest, so I had a one man preservation party after the @little-peppers went to bed the other night.
I like to prepare bags of "stir fry mix" and freeze them, so that was my first task. Out of four Snake Gourds and a few other plants I prepared six family sized stir fry mixes for the winter. All we'll have to do is heat up some oil or butter in a skillet and dump the bag in for a delicious meal this winter. We can also add some meat if we desire.
The major goal was to put up all the cucumbers and turn them into pickled. I use a simple vinegar & water mixture with a few other added ingredients. Due to the large volume of cucumbers, I used quart jars, which is a good size for my family anyway.
The interesting cucumbers from the @bluerthangreen & @allforthegood garden made some great slices. While I don't use some sort of a crinkle-cut knife to slice the pickle slices, the rough edge of these cucumbers still gave it a similar effect. Don't they just look cool?
I use a hot water bath to can most of garden vegetables. I've been doing it for years and thus far still haven't used a pressure cooker, although @mama-pepper does have some experience with those. Eventually we hope to build an outdoor kitchen down on our land to keep it cool in the house when we are having canning parties. We will see.
In total, I made thirty six quart jars of pickles! Some were whole, others were spears, and the rest were slices! That looks pretty good so far, but I'm going to have round two tonight, so there will be more to come! I should probably send a few down to the neighbors too as a way of saying thanks, don't you think? Anyway, turning that big pile of fresh garden vegetables into six stir fry meals and thirty six jars of pickles is pretty good in my opinion!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-pickles.....lots-of-pickles
Until next time…
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Thats a LOT!!!
That is, indeed, a very bountiful place you have there, and helping others out in exchange for food is a great example of what's perhaps the oldest form of barter we have in the Human species. Very cool! I noticed you put some things in bags, as well... does that mean you have an industrial freezer somewhere, as well? Or was that just till you could get them canned?
Bright Blessings to you and yours, and continued bountiful harvest!
We have freezer access at the moment, and will be putting a chest freezer in our mobile home soon. Freezing is easier than canning, but then you're dependent on electricity.
Very exciting and I know it feels great feeding your family clean healthy food!
Tastes great too! Just ate another Snake Gourd stir fry. Man, these things are amazing and delicious.
mmmmm looks like my mom's basement in poland ;)
That sounds nice! I wish more people had basements that looked like that!
Nice job and great harvest. I guess you are enjoying the fruit of your labour and that of your neighbours who entrusted their garden under your care.
The raining season we have here in our part are good for crops but not so good for us that rear animal especialy pig . We are still quaratining disease Pig Booth.
Just hoping the disease to pass away.
Beautiful.
We are what we eat.
Lotta work but will be well worth it come the bleak midwinter. I still remember the fool year we canned 200 quarts of green beans. That was overkill.
Nice work! I guess, giving some of the stuff to the neighbours who own the gardens would be in order - as a kind of "rent".
Just tell them to return the empty jars... :)
Wow, so many pickles!! I worry about the large headspace in some of those jars, though.
I'll leave up to about an inch in quart jars, and haven't seemed to have any issues yet with excessive head space. I'll keep an eye on them.
I've been making pickles since I was 5. I don't think I've ever made 36 quarts at once out of the garden. Well done!
The vegetables freeze just fine without blanching them? I always thought something terrible would happen if I just dropped them in the freezer after cutting.