Twenty-Eight Quarts

While Phil worked on putting up more fence, I spent about seven hours canning twenty-eight quarts of tomatoes.

Let me just say: way more tomatoes fit into a jar than it seems like they should. It looked like maybe six tomatoes would fit, but I think it was usually fifteen or more Romas per jar. I could hardly believe it.

I did really love having a water bath canner. Seven quart jars at once: it took a long time to heat the water, but such a huge pot!

I can see why people don't can much any more. It's a lot of effort and energy (physical and petroleum), and particularly hard to swallow knowing that even the more expensive organic canned tomatoes are only a dollar or two per pound.

But I can also see how addicting canning can be. How amazing to have summer foods available for the winter! How exciting to have heirloom tomatoes in glass jars (not aluminum! no waste!), grown in the best soil we can provide.

For dinner I made borscht with the last of the spring beets. It also had cabbage, onions, garlic, tomato juice, tomatoes, pork sausage, potatoes, and cream, all from our farm!

I was proud of the boys. Abraham and Joe ate only the sausage and the potatoes, along with the broth, which they both liked. Jadon tried to power through the whole meal, though he wasn't happy about it ("I've been eating potatoes in each bite with sundry other bits!"). Isaiah actually said, "I'd say borscht is okay," and then proceeded to eat three bowls!