Crops and Canning

We've had a big harvest year for our crops, and I think I've done more canning and preserving this year than I ever have! These are the products of our 2011 garden:

It all started in July, with the rhubarb. We have three plants that didn't grow very well, but I got a TON from my neighbor, and started making rhubarb everything! My favorite was this...I cooked rhubarb in some water and sugar, and it created a delicious dip that I loved putting on wheat thins covered in cream cheese!

And I tried canning some rhubarb jam, too. I don't love it as much as other jams (or as other rhubarb recipes either), but I'm proud of myself for trying something new!

In August, it was fruit-picking time for cherries, apricots, and apples. Our cherry tree was ripe at the end of July, and at the beginning of August I picked several bowls of cherries to make some cherry pie filling. Halfway through the first batch, I noticed some little white worms inside the cherries, so I quit making it altogether. I was really sad about it because cherry pie filling is so easy to make and I'd already used up all of last year's filling I made. But...that same afternoon, I found a wild apricot tree growing down the lane. So Josh and I picked every apricot off that tree to fill a gallon bucket, and I brought them home and made my first-ever Apricot Preserves. And I LOVE it!!! It was so redeeming to make it and I quickly got over the wormy cherries! I can't wait for my two apricot trees that Josh gave me for Mother's Day to grow fruit so I can make more of this in years to come!

Our translucent apple tree only grows fruit every other year, and this was one of those years! There were tons of apples on it, and they were beautiful! I made 35 quarts and 25 pints of applesauce with them! I worked on doing it for 3 days, and was so happy to see my 60 jars of completed sauce!

Some of the apples were bigger than any we've ever grown before! In fact, we had a lot of giant crops this year... This is the largest translucent apple with an average-sized Yukon Gold Potato we grew.

And here's that same large apple with one of the biggest Yukon Gold Potatoes we grew:

In August, September, and October, we picked potatoes. We planted two long rows of three different varieties: Yukon Gold, Red, and Russet. We've never had such a big and beautiful crop of them! We picked and ate, picked and ate, picked and ate! And at the end of October, we still had 4 burlap bags full of them! The boys loved digging them up, it was like finding buried treasure!

In October, it was time to pick and preserve corn, carrots, onions, pears, and red apples. We planted two very long rows of corn, and had a great crop! We ate corn on the cob in September for about three weeks, and then we picked all the rest for freezing. Half of it we gave away to a friend, and we still had 30 quarts of it!  

Our Indian corn grew as tall as ever! Josh is 6'1", and the corn stalk was over 2 feet taller than him! We got lots of variety of color off the decorative corn this year. It was always fun to reveal what was under the husk! We sold most of it at the Pumpkin Patch, and then we used the rest as decorations in our home.

We had a lot of carrots grow, but they grew wide instead of long. We used them in several recipes, then I chopped and froze the rest.

We started picking onions in September, and picked them in 3 rounds. I picked them, laid them outside on a  table to dry for a few weeks, then brought them inside, and cleaned them up to prepare them for cooking. Then repeated the process all over again.

Our pear tree had a great yield, and our red apple tree had the best crop ever! I made 6 jars of Spiced Apple/Pear freezer jam, and then I ran out of jars. Unfortunately, the remainder of my pears rotted before I could do anything else with them, and half the remaining apples rotted, too. I've been making Apple Crisp every week now trying to use up the rest of the red apples.

In October, November, and December, I worked on processing pumpkin. I made 21 freezer bags of it, but I've already used 8 of those bags making pies and cheesecakes with it!

For 5 months, I've been working on canning our crops! And I am so glad to finally announce that I am DONE!!! Until next year...