The Modern Victory Garden

Thursday night was another evening spent canning produce I purchased while traveling back from Spokane this past weekend.   This time it was the box of pears.   They were quite green when purchased (purposely chose green fruit so that I had more time to get to them) and they had ripened up nicely to the point of being perfect on Thursday.               

We reserved out a few for fresh eating, and the rest were peeled, quartered, and the cores/seeds cut out.   These were then heated in light syrup until hot and then packed into quart jars and processed in my water bath canner.   Pears cut into quarters pack pretty tightly into the jars and so I ended up with 7 very full quarts of pears from the box along with a few fruits reserved for fresh eating.      

I expect that this will be the last canning effort for this season.   I have lots more produce that will be preserved by freezing (the last of the corn & pumpkins (puree)), but I am not planning to can anything else at this point.   I had intended to do some regular dill pickles but the pickling cukes, while still producing, are not generating enough at any time to make processing worth my while.   We have been just using them fresh instead along with the slicing cucumbers.   Everything else in the garden is either intended to be used fresh and/or overwintered in the garden or stored by dry cellaring.        

I have a good supply of frozen, dry storage, and canned items that will supplement the garden's fall and winter harvests.   We prefer fresh produce from our four season harvest garden so I do not need huge amounts of preserved items - but we do need enough to fill in during the low periods of produce availability and to add more variety to the menu.              

The fall and winter crops are in and growing well.  Many are already harvest ready.   The freezer is full and so is the pantry.   The firewood is stacked and dry.   We just have a few chores to attend to for winter prep (stove pipe/chimney sweeping and gutter cleaning).   With the summer preserving efforts largely completed, I can now spend more time in the garden itself - which is something I am looking forward to.     

How is your preserving efforts going for this year?