Other areas may not have done so well, but Ohio has had a beautiful year with a resulting bountiful harvest.
This week has been insane for me. Between work and going to Grandma’s to can pears, and to my mom’s to can apples, I have hardly been home. In addition, we have put up so much food, that the freezers are full and and pantries rapidly filling.
Mother and I were complaining about how we were running out of room, and how there was still soooo much food to be put up and at one point, it hit me. This is what you call first world problems. Not only do we have an over abundance of food; we are complaining about it!
Wow.
Really wow.
Now we never meant to sound ungrateful, for we truly appreciate being able to grow and put up our own food. And it’s wonderful having freezers that we can put stuff in and shelving space to put our canned goods on.
I just think it’s too easy to look at the small picture that is me. Working as hard as I can at my jobs, being a homemaker and storing the bounty God has blessed us with. I look at the little things, like my hands that are rubbed raw from peeling fruit, and the fact that I am so tired I would like to just go to sleep for a year.
It seems that I forget what a blessing it is to be tired from putting up a bountiful harvest. So, I’m going to forget the whole raw hands, tired body, and messy house, and rejoice in what has been added to our winter’s supply!
Results of a Bountiful Harvest:
- 25 Quart of Pears for me, over 30 other quart grandpa’s and some other family.
- 60 Quart of Apples done with my mom. 25 of those quarts came home with me.
- Well over 100 pint of corn, with 35 being mine.
- 12 Quart of Green Beans canned from my garden, and 6 quart from my dear mother. (Grandma may give me some of her surplus to can as well.)
- Red Beets that my sis put up for me, because I had to work the day she was doing them.
- 14 quart of whole tomatoes.
- 2 quart of sauerkraut in the making. (I will share how I did it, if it turns out!)
- Tomatoes drying in the oven at this very moment. (post coming soon!)
- All the blueberries I froze this spring.
- Raspberries that I pick and freeze about a pint at a time. (Nearly 3 gallon sized bags full at this moment.)
I still have to make salsa and tomato sauce. And we are going to finish picking the apple tree and make a bunch of apple cider! Raw apple cider is the only kind I can drink (the stuff you buy is pasteurized and makes me sick). I would also like to make some apple cider vinegar as well. 🙂
It truly is a bountiful harvest this year. Praise the Lord for his goodness towards the sons of men!
Your post reminds me of growing up. We had a BIG garden and canned/froze/stored and shared with family. We also stopped at the local orchards and bought apples and peaches, and we grew strawberries, rhubarb, raspberries and blueberries. I miss those days.
We don’t have a very large garden at all, but between mom and our grandparents, there has been no lack of food this summer! 🙂
That is amazing!! I used to can berries for preserves, apples for applesauce, pickles, and whatever I could grow or U-pick. I can’t have a garden right now until we figure out how to get manure to our garden now that we don’t have a pickup truck. Thanks for sharing about your life. I am next door to you over at The Time-Warp Wife and also the state next to Ohio as in Pennsylvania 🙂 so we are neighbors in a way. Have a blessed day!!
I wish I could come help! I would love to learn the ropes from you and your mother! We only have a small garden but I’m looking to expand next year.
There’s a lot to be learned online, if you haven’t any one to help teach you 🙂
oh, I would LOVE to pick your brain about pears…but not the canning part…the PICKING part and RIPENING part. We have 4 pear trees in our small (and young) orchard. They have started producing pears, but I have had so much trouble understanding when to pick the pears and how to store them so that they get ripe without getting rotten. Finally after 2 years of trying to ripen them before canning, I gave up and canned them while they were rock hard (hot pack method). It worked and they are delicious, but the pealing of the hard pears was extremely difficult and I could only do 2-3 quarts before my hands were aching. In the end, I couldn’t even get to all the pears and threw away some beautiful ones.
Luckily I had about 40 quarts of peaches from the local market (my trees are still to young) and they kept me smiling through the winter whenever I pulled a jar out!
God Bless!
What we do is pick the pears while they are still green and then lay them out in a cool place for a couple days. Once they soften a little bit we can them. And yes, they are still a little hard, but no longer green at that point. Only thing that works for us.