We have reached the point in the gardening season when we are tired of produce. We have eaten our fill of beans and summer squash, and have been fermenting, canning, and dehydrating food for weeks. Never have I looked more forward to the first fall frost.
This Labor Day weekend, we spent a few hours each day in the kitchen with water bath canning and pressure canning projects. At the start of the weekend, our entire dining room table was covered with tomatoes. The bush beans are starting to produce, and the grapes are at their peak. I think we are at 30+ quarts of tomato sauce and a case of salsa. By the end of the weekend, cases of beans and grape jelly joined the the tomato sauce and salsa on the dining room table. The dehydrator continued to provide dried tomatoes. The early purchases of canning jars and lids paid off. We ran out of liquid pectin, and bought the last box at the local hardware store. We do not yet have a final storage solution as our basement is still filled with projects, so the preserved food was moved to a relatively empty walk-in closet which, to be honest, I forgot we had.
It feels like we have turned the corner on summer. Nighttime temperatures were in the 50s this weekend, and there is noticeably less daylight. The tomato plants and pole beans are starting to fade. We have a couple of weeks of bush beans, and maybe some canned grape juice to put up, and that should be it for canning. The apple trees did not do well with the late frost, so there will probably be little in the way of hard cider or apple butter this year.
We are starting to plan for the end of the season. Maggie picked some dried runner beans to save the seeds for planting next year. We plan to harvest the pumpkins and winter squash next weekend to allow the skins to cure before storing them for the winter. The first fall frost date in our area is September 26. It is hard to believe, but that date is only 2 weeks away. It will then be time to look at what produced and what did not. After some rest in the fall and early winter, we will forget the hard work, marvel at the tomato sauce as we make chili, pull out the seed catalogues and garden notes, and plan for the cycle to start again.
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