Even though I seem to be doing less and less food preservation each year, it still adds up.
It never ceases to amaze me!
Stats
- Strawberries (from PYO): 4 gallons, frozen whole
- Blueberries, local farm and grocery store: 10 pints
- Red Raspberries: 18 quarts, frozen
- Zucchini Relish: 4 quarts and 13 pints
- Sweet Pickles: 22 quarts
- Spaghetti Sauce (from free heirlooms, and made by my younger daughter): 26 quarts
- Applesauce, Lodi: 37 quarts
- Pesto (walnut-butter): 12 half-pints
- Peaches: 36 quarts, canned; 2 gallons of chunks, frozen
- Nectarines: 6 quarts, canned; 9 gallons of chunks, frozen
- Pepper-Onion Sauteed: dozens of little packs
- Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pizza Sauce: 16 pints, 1 half-pint
- Tomatoes, canned: 16 quarts, 15 pints
- Roasted Tomato Sauce: 17 pints, 1 3-cup jar
- Roasted Tomato Sauce with Garlic: 13 pints, 1 half-pint
- Salsa: 17 quarts and 6 pints, canned
- Grapes: 3 quarts sweet juice, canned
- Corn: 49 pints, frozen
- Green beans: unrecorded number of pints, frozen
- Beef: a half
- Cheeses: 71 wheels, plus feta, soft cheese, mozzarella, butter, ghee, and gallons of yogurt
- Mead: 1 5-gallon batch of Spiced chai
- Ice Cream Base: about 5 quarts
Notes
*Neither of the kids were working at the CSA this summer, so we didn’t get nearly as many fresh veggies as usual. Even so, I still felt like we had plenty from here and there. Or maybe we’re just not eating as much any more?
*Along with the apples for sauce, we got a bushel of Fuji for fresh eating, and I’m getting another bushel this weekend. Also, 10 gallons of cider for freezing.
*Our grapes did not produce this year (perhaps because my husband pruned them too hard?), so we got a few from my brother’s arbor.
*We did a family corn day again this year. Together, we bought 48 dozen ears of corn from a local farmer and of that, our family got about 12 dozen.
*I went nuts on cheese. (Just today I cut into one that may be the best cheese I’ve ever made.)
*I’m pretty sure I froze a few 1-cup bags of sour cherries from our tree, but I forgot to make note of it.
*We didn’t plant any green beans, so I was super thrilled to get Mom and Dad’s surplus. I didn’t record how much I got, but I’m pretty sure it was more than 20 very full pint bags.
*We had Fiona butchered at T&E Meats: we got half and our friends got the other half. This is the first time we’ve eaten a Jersey, and I’m loving the meat. (We also sold Ferdinand and Remus.)
*We are ending the year with three pregnant cows (Emma, Charlotte, and Butterscotch) and one open heifer (Gracie).
*We had way more peppers than we could use in fresh eating, so I sauteed batches of them with chopped onions and then wrapped the cooked little blobs in plastic and froze them for later. I pop these Blob Babies into anything and everything that might be benefitted by some onion-pepper goodness.
*I have an insane amount of (untallied) butter in the freezer. Also, I started making ghee, so I have jars of that squirreled away in the barn fridge.
*We finally ran out of lard so it’s time to process more of the fat I have in the freezer. (Turns out, I tend to make more “homemade” fat than we can use up.)
*We got hundreds and hundreds of gallons of milk. In the height of milk and cream season, I froze jars of milk/cream for single batches of ice cream. It seemed kinda crazy since we often have more milk than we know what to do with, but now that two of our cows are dried off, I’m so grateful for that little stash.
*We’ve been burning through the yogurt. Every couple weeks I make 3-4 gallons, and then about once a week I make a bulk batch of smoothies, pour it into pint jars, and then stash them in the fridge for the week’s breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. It’s good stuff.
*I’m impressed by how quickly we’re going through the mead. I don’t drink that much, but I share lots of it, and some of it — I’m looking at you, uber-dry Honey Jack — isn’t worth sharing.
This same time, years previous: Rock on, Mama!, 2016 book list, toasty oatmeal muffins, Christmas pretty, salvaged compost.
5 Comments
Pauline in Upstate NY
Wow!! That’s an AMAZING amount of preserved food for a year in which you say you did less… Well done, you! (Are you still working at Magpie, too?)
Jennifer Jo
Yes, just one half day a week.
Mountaineer
Even so, are you not amazed at the size of your grocery bill? I wonder how long, given all the produce we have put by, we could survive, buying only salt. But we’re not brave enough to try.
Jennifer Jo
YES. But I mostly notice the savings with the meat/dairy. Considering that prices are rising, it’s kinda wild.
John Brown
It sounds like there needs to be a dozen of you to get all that done. Amazing. I try to do more homemade stuff and limit the store bought preservative loaded stuff. I’m really interested in cheese making and have tried a few famers cheeses. I love to make my own butter from the heavy cream i get from the local amish dairy. I would locd to get a few wedges of different cheeses from you.