It has been a long time since I had to process tomatoes. This is mainly thanks to my Amish friend Elsie's tomato plant. That thing just produces it's head off. I start a tray of them for Elsie each spring from seeds she saves. She used to ask for 48 plants and now she asks for 15. I can see why. I've been planting this variety for a few years now and saving some seeds to add to hers to maintain some diversity in the strain and apparently we've bred a monster producer. Also the plant grows eight feet tall!
I prepared about half of what I had and it just fit in my six quart cooker. I cooked them down for about four hours, periodically removing liquid. They cooked down to two quarts which I bagged and put in the freezer.
But I still had enough for another batch...
Before supper I got those peeled and into the cooker. They just fit. I reduced them to two quarts also.
So these would have produced 12 quarts if I had just gone ahead and water bath canned the quartered tomatoes. I will use one quart of these per one pound of ground beef when I make my chili this fall.
We finally got through all of the pears. Four processing sessions and a result of 28 quarts! That's fourteen quarts a piece for my neighbor and I. The first canner full was a little intimidating. We didn't really know what we would be up against. Once we got our routine figured out, and could estimate our yield, the second batch was sort of fun. It was taking us about three hours to process one batch at a leisurely rate. One person would have had an extra hour of peeling on their own. The third batch we delayed one day for weariness, but proceeded with resignation. That one turned out the prettiest with our pears pure white and our syrup clear. We were getting good at this.
The fourth batch... well, we still had a lot of pears and told each other we'd come this far, we weren't going to quit now. We'd better finish what we started. The fourth batch took us the least amount of time because we knew exactly when in the peeling process to start the water bath pre-heating so it was ready exactly when we got the jars packed.
While we were peeling the fourth batch, one of our other gardening friends happened to call. Neighborlady put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter as we peeled.
Friend: "Well, I just got out of the garden and I wondered if you would like to come over and make Salsa?"
Us in unison: "NOOOO!"
She hadn't, at that point, realized that she was on speaker phone and we were both there up to our elbows in pear juice for the fourth time this week, so she was a little taken aback at first. You don't usually get a resounding Hell No! to an offer like that. It really wasn't an off the wall idea. We all have tomatoes and peppers and onions lying about and the past two years the two of them had made pretty nice batches of fresh salsa together. We were just tired of peeling and chopping and rinsing. And our fingernails are a funny color, and our legs are aching from standing at the counter. We're done.
I gave up canning tomatoes years ago but something is obviously going to have to be done about this.
I have already scattered tomatoes around to as many people as I know whodon'tgrow their own. I had to pick them because it is going to rain today and tomorrow. Not a lot but they split very easily at this stage and any rain at all would ruin them. I'll throw them in the slow cooker tomorrow and render them down and freeze them to use in chili. These are almost all from just one plant. This year I planted four indeterminant slicer plants. Next year... only two plants!
They're awful nice produce to be complaining about...
This time last year I pruned my Little Lime Punch Hydrangea bush and dried the flowers. I'm doing the same thing this year. It had quite a bit of light weight branching on the south side near the ground and I want that gone, so I just pruned early. I will remove the large blooms for winter so they don't break down the bush in the snow and wind, but I won't take long stems with them because I want to leave the height and structure.
But I am drying them the same. You just put a little water in the bottom of a vase so they don't wilt right off the plant and then they dry naturally as it runs out. I just leave them on the deck out of the wind and they provide a nice bright pop of color. Actually, they are a really nice outdoor bouquet because I don't have to keep an eye on the water and they don't shed petals like Dahlias do.
The blooms from last year still look great. I just walked in and snapped this picture.
I can see a little browning but they have only dropped three or four petals. They have held up really well and maintained their color.
Besides my own pear tree that is producing wonderfully this year, my mother has several pear trees. Early last week she sent an S.O.S. for too many pears, and my husband loves canned pears, so off we went. It was a rainy morning and we had to delay our plans over an hour waiting for the rain to clear. I will not soon forget wrestling that pear tree in 90% humidity with rain dripping off of the leaves. It was hot. And the yellow jackets were trying to defend their fruit. I swear those things will follow a ripe pear right into your mouth. You have to be careful. A few of them body slammed me but no one was mad enough to sting. There was plenty for everyone.
You really want to pick directly off of the tree. Pears ripen from the inside out and a pear that has fallen is not only likely to be bruised, but will also be too far along in ripeness to handle easily when paring. If a pear is NOT almost ripe, you basically can not pull it off with a picker, no matter how hard you try. My husband and I picked one bushel from the Bartlett tree and another bushel from an unidentified tree which I believe is a Seckel. They are beautiful pears. After being dragged through the wet orchard, and sweating from my eyeballs I had to do a Walmart run. Man that all wiped me out. This was one of the first times that "normal activity" made me feel old. I had to take a nap.
My next door neighbor had offered to help me can pears. Actually what happened is that I offered to bring her pears and she didn't skip a beat before saying "Misery loves company. I'll do it if you do it with me." That's fine. I've never actually canned pears and she has a gas stove which is so much better for water bath canning. And I wanted to do quarts which my turkey fryer method is not optimal for because of the number of quarts it holds (doesn't hold). Neighborlady used to can pears a lot when they lived down the road and had a pear tree. And her mother canned pears so it was a nostalgia thing for her. We spread the two bushels out in her barn to ripen and cull through.
So far we have canned two batches of 7 quarts each and have used about half of these pears. Pears continue to ripen at room temperature and we can choose the perfect stage to can them. Also, as we got comfortable with what our yield was going to be, we got a lot more liberal will culling instead of trying to salvage as much as we could from a knotty or bruised pear.
It is difficult to explain how to tell when a pear is the perfect ripeness. It is that moment when the skin begins to feel alive. The color also changes subtly from green to gold and the blossom end takes on a russet color. (I've had a lot of practice because for several weeks I have had a basket of pears on my counter.
As soon as they mellow they go into the fridge basket to chill for eating. A Bartlett pear must be a difficult crop to get to market looking pretty. These all have some degree of sooty blotch on their skins. And they are not particularly easy to peal. Juice galore. No wonder store bought canned pears have no taste. They must have to process them green when they still have not developed any taste.
Well they all eat the same.
Nothing compares to the taste of home canned pears in light syrup. For years I have gone to the county fairs and wonder how canned goods are judged. Well! I sure could judge the canned pears now. I know exactly what variables there are. Headspace. Color. Packing. Purity of the syrup. Spots on the pears. I almost want to do one quart with the best pears just to see if I could turn out one at my personal best. Below is my share of the first two batches. We are taking a break today (Neighborlady processed tomatoes yesterday and she's a bit whooped) and tomorrow is another canning day.
I am no canning expert, but if you would like to know more about the process of canning pears, here is a link to a good YouTube video that will explain it well.
Now that September is here we have begun our fall chores: shampooing rugs, washing tractors, cutting cornstalks, taking apart the pumpkin patch. That comes with a bonus. It is time for a decor change at the side porch.
I have been growing these purple pepper plants in the garden and enjoying them there, but now they are front and center. I also am in love with these dark green pumpkins. They are a result of using seeds from last year's pumpkins which were obviously cross pollinated with zucchinis. I am definitely going to include dark green (or black) pumpkin seeds in next year's order.
The Black Pearl peppers are my favorite.
When the peppers ripen they turn cherry red.
I still have pumpkins in the pumpkin patch curing. You should leave them on the vine until you can no longer leave a dent with your thumbnail.
Here is a picture from last year's side porch display.
My earliest Coleus cuttings have put out roots. It was amazing. None for days and days and then all of a sudden... quarter inch roots.
I have to say that these tubes are not easy to keep filled with water. I would go out most mornings and half of the cuttings would be high and dry. But they are amazingly resilient. I am happy to get them into some soil. I stuck them in cells and placed them on the lower level for some shade. I have wanted to keep them out in the sun so they can stay outside until frost. Life would be easier if I had just put them indoors under a grow light. They would not have used so much water every day. But I am stubborn, and that would have just been one more out of the way stop on my daily rounds. So in the sun they stay.
My next round of cuttings will be specifically chosen for longer stems so they will be better at keeping their feet in the water.
