Canning potatoes and, of course, more tomatoes!

Canning Crazy!

I am getting a bit overwhelmed with the harvesting and canning activities so what I am going to do here is just post some pictures that i took over the past several days and add captions to explain things.

14 quarts and 6 pint and a half jars of tomatoes that Katherine cleaned and I canned on Sept 4 evening

This is a picture of the cucumber relish (I think) that Katherine made on labor day weekend.  16 pints.  She didn't like the recipe so I won't post it.  It has way too much liquid in it.

 We made it up to the farm last Friday, Sept 5, in time for me to gather some of the rough potatoes from the potato harvest and can them!  We ate 3 of the jars shown below during the weekend to see if we liked them done this way.  Personally, i loved them!  Katherine cooked them in potatoes, eggs and onions breakfasts!  Used our own onions too!

This is the next morning immediately after taking them out of the PC.

Closer view

I didn't get a picture of them later that day, but I will state that the "clear" liquid in those jars gets thick and white with starch!  I personally did not work to get them out of the jars after canning so I don't know really how hard they are to dislodge.  Katherine said it wasn't too bad and she votes for canning more of the damaged potatoes.  They are convenient and don't take freezer space.

More broccoli and our first cauliflower of the season!  The cauliflower looks super good!

We haven't eaten it yet.  That's the problem when stuff comes in this fast.  We just finished eating the broccoli from LAST weekend!

I sorted the potatoes according to damaged vs non-damaged and color.  Looks like we got a total of about 175 lbs this harvest!

The ones in the bucket are next years seed potatoes

Brassica patch is looking quite nice actually!

Late cabbage

another late cabbage, heading up nice!

Quite a few late cabbages made it!  We might have to figure out what to do with all this cabbage!

The cauliflower and broccoli plants are still going strong.  Not sure if we will get enough to freeze or pickle though. 

Yep - that's my green globe artichoke!  Katherine says that they are perennial, so even if this doesn't produce this year, maybe next?  I just need to figure out a way of moving it - its in the center of the paw-paw patch!

Another artichoke.  I have 4 in all.

The kale!  Lots of green leaves!  I sprayed all the brasicas with BT.  I didn't harvest any kale this weekend.  I think i will harvest some and start drying it next weekend.

Smokey, checking things out!

Harvested the sunflowers (most of them) this weekend.  I put them on the garage floor to dry.  I thought about putting them in the red-barn on the trailer bed, but i was afraid that squirrels would help themselves!  The garage is a bit tighter.

Trying to get a record of the tomatoes.  I think we will just have to inventory them after we are all done at this point.

this shows 28 quarts plus 6 pint and a halfs

We brought 3 bus trays full of tomatoes back this time.  Katherine is already a bit punchy over the weekend canning activities and she thinks there is no end in sight.  We did give some of the heirloom "pink lady" tomatoes away to neighbors and friends at work.  She is going to put some of these in trays (after juicing) to try to get a thicker sauce going.  She did a bunch of sauce on the farm on Sunday night - it was very good!  It does take some cooking though. The idea is that on trays, in the oven, there will be more surface area for the sauce to evaporate faster.  We will see!

Buttercup Squash

Those green squash with the little cap on the end are called "buttercup squash".  We probably got the seed packets mixed up with "butternut" squash (since I don't have any of those - lol).  Well, we finally tried one and it was GOOD!  Wonderful flavor and a great texture.  Bright orange!  We will be saving the seeds from these for sure!

Pressure canning tomatoes on hotplate

Katherine is doing crushed tomatoes up here on the farm using the new hotplate that we got a month ago.  The hotplate was a bit disappointing for hot-water bath because it takes so long to heat a full canner load of loaded jars!  We are proceeding with the general recipe found at NCHFP, but it agrees with the ball blue book recipe as well.  We did not add any acid to this first batch because we had mostly heirloom tomatoes which are known to be high acid.  If we do Roma tomatoes, perhaps we should add some citric acid.

However, for pressure canning, it is perfect!  We are at an altitude of 1150 ft here and the books say we should be doing quarts of tomatoes about 15 mins at 15 lbs pressure.  With the 15lb weight on, the hotplate heats up the canner to pressure in about 15-20 mins (of course, the time will depend on how hot the jars were when you put them in as well as how hot the water in the canner was before you put the jars in).  Then we vented for 7 mins, placed the weight on and started the 15 min countdown.  We adjusted the heat control from 12 (max) to 8 to maintain the 15 psi.  The hotplate had no trouble maintaining the pressure.

Katherine prepared and canned 7 quart jars and 6 1.5 pint jars of tomatoes today!  They all sealed with no mishaps or problems.

A total of 11.5 quarts today!

Canned tomatoes last night

Canned the ripened tomatoes from the farm last night. They were mostly ripe, just a few green hard spots.  Put up 2 quarts and one pint.  One of the quart jar cracked on first placing in the water bath. I tried to save the contents and mostly succeeded.  I added citric acid to this batch. 1 teaspoon for 2 quarts.

Again, like last time, lots of tomatoes leaked during canning.  One of the quarts failed to seal.  I made up the lost liquid with water (about a half inch) and re-canned that.quart.  it did seal after the second canning

Damn frustrating!

I am thinking of taking some quart jars with me to Pennsylvania in case more are ready.

Total tomatoes canned so far is only 3.5 quarts!

Trying to can some tomatoes today!

Well, I canned the rest of the cucumbers that we brought back.  Only got 4 quarts (3 quart jars and 2 pint jars) of kosher dills canned.  Out of cucs!

I have some tomatoes that really needed to be used, so I decided to can them as a test run.  They process 35 min in hot water bath! (for PINTS even!)

I canned 2 pints of crushed tomatoes and had some leftover in the fridge.  However, when I removed them from the hot water bath I noticed that they were leaking tomatoes!  Well, one eventually sealed, but the other didn't :(  I am confused since I had PLENTY of head space in those jars!  Was a half inch - I am pretty damn sure!

I am trying to can that one now - I also am trying a half pint with the tomatoes I had in fridge.  I know its a waste heating up the canner just for 1 pint - but its the principle of the thing now!  It's tomatoes for gosh sake!

BTW:  I followed NCHFP's recipe for crushed tomatoes.  Note that they have you add vinegar (or lemon juice or citric acid) to ensure that the tomatoes are acidic enough (some tomatoes are low acid - so better safe than sorry!).  I also added 1/4" teaspoon of salt per pint which they list as optional.  The vinegar and salt both go directly in the jars, not in the boiling tomatoes.

There might be enough tomatoes for another 3 pints to can this week.

Still have green beans and corn to deal with.  I wanted to pressure can the green beans for the experience, but Katherine wants us to do the pressure canning together since neither of us has done it before.  Therefore, we will just freeze the beans - probably this evening.   I have to do some "work" work!

Oh, while I was out walking Smokey, I noticed that a couple of the sunflowers were bent down.  One was missing a top!  I suspect squirrels!   I am gonna put some posts in and tie them up like I did with the ones in PA.

Update 9:00pm:

Katherine and I froze 4 more quarts of green beans tonight!