With two last pints of tomato sauce, we have made it through another homesteading rite of passage - canning season.
We by no means have anything to complain about. Many homesteaders put up hundreds of jars of food in a season. It can be exhausting work, bringing even the most experienced to tears as they process that last batch of zucchini relish. We work hard nursing seedlings through frost and weeds to have them burst full of produce, only to be overwhelmed by the bounty. One can only eat so many tomatoes a day.
Our garden this year consisted of one 60-square-foot bed, existing wild and concord grape vines, and a few untamed apple trees. These provided plenty of produce to try several preservation techniques. Over the course of 5 weeks, we were able to process the following:
Canning: Six pints of tomato sauce; 36 half-pints of grape jelly; three quarts of grape juice
Fermentation: Two half-gallons of apple scrap cider vinegar; nine half-gallon and five quarts of fermented tomatoes; one quart of apple sauce; and one quart of a fermented apple 'experiment'
Dehydration: One pint dried tomatoes, one half-pint dried onions, and one half-pint dried apples.
Dry Storage: Over 10 pounds of onions.
The cost for this food was little more than time. We already had most of the canning jars and equipment. The most expensive item was the jelly, requiring about $20 in sugar and pectin to produce six batches of grape jelly. The cheapest Pick N' Save brand of organic grape jelly is about $3.50 a pint, so we made the equivalent of $63 of jelly - a delicious return on our investment. The onions cost less that $2 for a bag of sets from the bulk bin at the Nelson Agri-Center in Viroqua. The lesson is that even a tiny garden can produce food at a substantial savings.
I had hoped to make some apple butter and hard cider, but the cows have gotten all of the literal low-hanging fruit. There is always next season, but maybe I have one tear-free night of canning left in me.
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