Now that summer and early fall have past, I thought it would be a good time to record all my canning efforts this year. This way, hopefully I remember what I did next year when I try and guess how many pounds of fruit I want. (But let's not kid ourselves, I will still have no idea).
Strawberries: May
In May, Brendan, Blake, Mariah and I went to a u-pick strawberry place and picked a ton of strawberries. (I loaded up my blue bowl). Turns out, I wanted more than that. I did make jam and ended up with 6 jam jars in the freezer. I most likely will not do jam again next year because we do not go through it that quickly. But I also froze strawberries for smoothies and got two gallon freezer bags full. I used those up before the winter.
Peaches: JulyIn July, Brendan ordered us some peaches from a place outside the city that gets them from some other state. (Maybe Georgia? I can't remember). I got a full box. I canned 6 quarts (since that's all my canner holds at one time) and frozen two gallon bags of peaches. We then ate the rest. We have gone through one bag of peaches already but I still have one left.
Corn: September
We did corn late again this year, mostly due to the fact that we were in Turkey in two weeks and the summer kind of got away from us. Next year, I would like to "put up" corn a little bit earlier in the season. We processed corn on the Sunday of Labor day weekend. We got two "party packs" of corn which was about 4 dozen each. We went to Blake and Brendan's house so we could have air conditioning while we worked. I have 12 containers of corn in the freezer, which is more than I did the previous year. I've only used one so far. So we'll see if I can use it up before summer rolls around again.
Concord Grapes: September
Also on Labor Day Weekend, I decided to process some concord grapes into juice. I ended up making 3 pints and 2 quarts. It's a concentrate so each jar is actually double the amount of juice. I made this hoping I would try to make Grandma Sadie's grape pudding some time. The plan is to take a jar down to VA during Christmas and try it there with the fam. The process was very messy and long but the juice was very delicious.
Finally, we ended the canning season by processing apple sauce. This year, we got the apples from Utzy's farm out in Plain City, rather than doing a u-pick. Shirley and I got two boxes of apples total and got 38 1/2 quarts of applesauce from them. (My portion was 24 1/2 since Shirley wanted less than half). This was slightly more than what I had last year. So we'll see if I can get through it all again.
And there you have it. My 2024 canning journal. Maybe one of these years I'll do tomatoes or green beans again. But we'll have to wait and see.
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