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| A pan of tomatoes awaiting to be canned! |
One of my greatest joys is eating a fresh piece of fruit or a vegetable from my very own backyard! There are very few things that can compare and all the hours of work is SO worth the reward of the sweet taste of tomato in my mouth!
Another reason I love it is the connection it gives me to my heritage and the precious people that came before me. I love being able to talk to my Grandma about different varieties of squash and how to grow onions. I love getting recipes from her that have been made for so many years. My Grandpa helped us put up our garden fence last year and we could talk about living off the land for hours. What seems like such a "new and green" movement has been in my DNA for years!
Last week we harvested enough Tomatoes to can a few quarts, we have varieties of Cherokee Purple, Black from Tula, Cherokee Chocolate, Arkansas Traveler and Tappy's Heritage. They are all Heirlooms that we grew from seeds. This is my first year of canning all heirloom's and while researching online I found tons of opinions about canning and it was hard to find any definite information regarding canning Heirloom Tomatoes. It's very important that the PH level is right in canning and from what I've heard heirlooms have a lower acid level. I ended up putting a 1TB of lemon/lime juice in with each quart along with the usual 1tb salt.
We are weighing things this year and one fun fact I determined is 12lb of tomatoes should yield about 6 quarts jars.
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| Waiting for water to boil to scald the tomatoes in order to peal off their skin |
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| Filling up the jars with goodness! |
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| In the boiler |
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| My beauties! All but one sealed which I threw in a freezer bag and froze. |
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