Reflections on the Harvest

On one of the blogs that I follow I read about an 88 year old woman who is still gardening and canning. This year she preserved 285 quarts of 27 different items. To me this is the perfect example of living ones life for sustainability and self reliance. I do not know much about this woman, but you can read more about her at, http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/1530

When Mimi and I were talking about this, we started to think of all the things that we have canned this past year and put into our food storage. This is the list we came up with.

Tomatoes -50 pints
Okra - 54 pints
Green beans - 8 pints
Pumpkin - 48 pints
Anasazi beans - 12 pints
Grape juice 24 quarts
Elder berry juice - 36 quarts
Pomegranate juice - 3 pints
Tuna - 46 pints
Blackberry jam - 30 pints

During this summer we also put up allot of frozen produce.

Cherries - 10 Gallons
Peas - 1 Gallon
Okra - 3 Gallons
Zucchini - 3 Gallons
Strawberries - 3 Gallons
Blueberries - 1 Gallon
Green beans - 3 Gallons

This brings our total to about 251 pints and 60 quarts of 10 different products. We also have 24 gallons of 7 different products preserved in our freezer. For our small family to produce and preserve that much food from a 400 square foot garden is a large step in the direction of sustainable living.

I think that next year we will work harder to diversify our garden so that we have more products we can preserve and put in our storage. We have been doing well with using fresh vegetables to off set food costs, but we need more produce we can preserve.