Vegetable harvest - more fruit

Green beans

Well, that bean patch had some issues this year, no the least of which is that it was a stream bed for a good portion of the growing season.  Also, there were a couple of varmints, I suspect a groundhog and definitely saw a rabbit munching on the green beans!   It was interesting to note that neither varmints seemed to go for the pinto beans - just the green beans.  Also, because the rains kept the ground too wet to get into how, the weeds pretty much took over!  This weekend I went in to pick and had to de-weed the beans to find them!  The yield was quite poor.  No surprises there.  About 2 quarts.  We just cooked them up and had them for dinners during the week.

Green beans piled on some cornbread for dinner!

Canned more peaches


I picked some more peaches.  Most of these were yellow peaches this time.  I have 4 trees that produce yellow peaches (of 2 different varieties).  I canned 8 pints of these.

I should point out that I used the new type of canner that Katherine bought.  It's actually quite useful in that it frees up the stove for canning prep work.

Strawberries and Blackberries

Strawberry harvest continues.  I froze some and used some for more fruit leather.  Also started picking the blackberries.  Seems we missed the start of the blackberry season by a week or so.  Just so busy with the elderberries!

Elderberry harvest continues

Not much to add here.  Just processing away!  This actually takes most of our time during the weekend due to the fact that we having to manually pick these little berries off the stems!

We have determined that if we pick this contained to heaping full that it produces about enough for 5-6 quarts of canned juice.  Also, if you have the option, do not pick more than you can destem in one day.  Working full day we can do about 10-12 quarts of  canned juice (two of the above containers worth of pickings)