More pickles, salsa, and beans....

I had a busy week-end. It was time to admit the beans needed canning, the children didn't sell all the tomatoes at the Farmer's Market, and yesh, there were MORE cucumbers needing pickling.


When the dust settled we had another 16 quarts of beans, 24 quarts of salsa, and 5 - 2 quart jars of pickles to add to the stash. This is just 4 jars shy of my goal for pickles, I think I'll call it quits on those.



For salsa, I was aiming at 24 quarts, so we're done!

Beans ... well I was aiming at 3 shelves of 24 jars each, 72 jars in total, but with planting the beans late I think we'll bottom out at 2 shelves if we are lucky. (Last year we did 48 jars and we JUST made it through the year with rationing.)

The pole beans aren't even blooming yet and I am expecting frost any day. This was expected and the reason I planted so many bush beans.

Still I consider it a good year as we grew most of our own beans for fresh eating and canning. Grandma did send us the occasional ice-cream bucketful when she had too many but overall most of what we used we grew ourselves. That just plain feels good!

The little jars in the front are of dried mint. We have one, just one, mint plant and it supplies us and many of our friends with enough leaves for tea year-round. I'll post about it separately as it is a truly sustainable and easy project that works great!