Yes, we "Can"

Summer Mix

Jay grew up canning veggies.  My family never did that, so I'm just learning how.  Luckily our friend Dwain, and his sister Fonda have been mentoring me, and reintroducing the art to Jay.  We just got back from a canning trip to Western North Carolina at Dwain's mountain house in Clyde.  We originally planned on canning bush beans in June when we were there, but the beans weren't quite ready yet.  We lucked out on this trip, because we were able to find fresh local beans  in addition to the tomatoes, okra, onions and corn that we had planned on canning.  We also canned 5 pounds of boiled peanuts, and were a little disappointed that the peanuts we bought in Georgia came from New Mexico.  So much for local!

Dwain and Jay.  And Beans.

Beans

Beans going in the Canner

We started with 2 bushels of green beans, which yielded 46 quarts canned.  Dwain's house is the perfect setting for this, with balconies overlooking the mountain.  In order to not heat up the house, we used a propane turkey cooker on one of the balconies for the canning, and for our prep area as well.  The weather was perfect - about 80 during the day and high 50s at night. His house is in the very center of this photo.  We took it across the valley last time in June.

Dwain's house from across the valley

Boiled Peanuts = Crack

Next, we made boiled peanuts.  They turned out fantastic. I ate an entire pint of them myself the other night when I was nursing my sprained ankle.  Nothing better for a sprained ankle than a crapload of salty goodness, I always say!

Fonda with her mad tomato skills

Jay prepping Summer Mi

Finally came the tomatoes!  In all, we canned 125 pounds of tomatoes in various forms:  whole, juiced, and in summer mix, which has tomato chunks, sliced okra, vidalia onions and fresh shucked silver queen corn.   We cold-packed the whole tomatoes and the juice, and pressure cooked the summer mix.  Having many hands helped made this so much fun.  I love learning from Fonda and Dwain, and spending time with Jay preparing good food for us to share. When all was said and done, we had 140 quarts of food to bring back home.  We had brought up several dozen boxes of jars, and ended up having to buy more from Tractor Supply (we bought them out of wide mouths) and Ingles (a local grocery store).   I also picked up two canning cookbooks, Put 'Em Up by Sherri Books Vinton, and The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving so I can start dreaming about what we'll try next.  Fonda always brings fantastic food she grows in Illinois. She made some out-of-this-world creamed corn that I'd love to try my hand at if I can make it with non-cow dairy products.  I'm really grateful to Fonda and Dwain for sharing their 'tribal knowledge' and helping us nourish our bodies and our lives with yummy food goodness!  I'm also grateful that my sweet husband and I have so many shared interests.  It would be hard to do this without his help and ability to pick up extremely heavy canners full of mason jars and boxes full of canned produce. 

We're Egg-static!

Yes, we've joined the ranks of the Backyard Chicken Egg Producers.  2/3 of our hens are producing eggs!  Phyllis started first, about two weeks ago, and Pearl started shortly afterward.  So far Sylvia is very interested in the process, but she has not started laying yet.  I'm going to get her a copy of "Are You There, God, It's Me Margaret" so she won't feel like she's all alone in the world while the rest of the girls are developing ahead of her.

This picture shows our first 7 eggs.  the larger one in the lid of the container is one of the farm fresh eggs we get from Lancaster's our Produce Club Farm I'm a little bummed that our eggs aren't blue/green, because I thought that Ameracaunas always lay blue/green eggs, but a friend of mine told me that they might not lay that color right from the start, so we'll have to just wait and see.

Jay made a fabulous egg scramble for us this weekend, with mushrooms, tomatoes and fresh basil from the garden.  The egg shells are really crisp and hard, and the yolks are very firm and a gorgeous golden color.  They sit up really high and don't get all runny.