Summer into Jars
Posted: Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
It’s the time of the season when we work from early morning to late at night. We remind ourselves that we’ll sleep in December. Some days, we feel our most precious farm tool is the baby monitor, so we can keep packing tomatoes and broccoli, trimming onions, and counting cucumbers while the kids sleep.
But amid all the work in the packing shed and fields, it’s also the time to put summer into jars! This last weekend we got started for the season – dusting off the canning equipment and the Ball Blue Book (our favorite step-by-step resource). The best part about this first canning project was explaining to our 2-year-old what we were doing. He listened closely as we described how we’ll be able to eat green beans even in the cold winter months. This concept clicked in his mind, and he scurried about to help us top and tail the beans in preparation for the jars. Then commented, “I’ll make snow angels when its cold, then eat some green beans!” Our pantry shelves, just about bare this time of the season, are starting to be restocked now with 18 quarts of dilly beans and 8 quarts of green beans. Another 40 pounds of beans, then we’ll start in on tomatoes!
The lyrics to Greg Brown’s song Canned Goods runs through my head — “Taste a little of the summer Taste a little of the summer Grandma put it all in jars…Oh she got magic in her you know what I mean She puts the sun and rain in with her beans…I really gotta go down and see her soon Cause the canned goods that I buy at the store Ain’t got the summer in them anymore…”
We hope these bountiful boxes are giving you the opportunity to put the taste of summer into jars!
