Recognizing that the weather is cooling and that this coming week is crazy for Jennifer and me at work, I decided to spend Sunday processing veggies. We picked our last apple tree of the year (I hope!) Saturday night and I started saucing about 9 am.
Eighteen litres later, we had finished with about half the apples (remainder above). Jenn then turned the ripe tomatoes on the window sill into sauce (which we froze) and we sat down to dinner as the rain started. I went out to fiddle with the dehydrator on the back deck, noticed the cold and checked the weather.
After some handwringing, I decided we needed to pull the pin on the tomatoes because of the risk of frost. I pretty much let the plants do what they wanted this summer instead of pruning and tying them up and we had a lot of bushy plants. In the rain and twilight, we started picking. And picking. Then got more buckets and picked some more.
We ended up with 10+ gallons (and we've been picking non-stop for a month). Above you can see about 35% of the haul. Because of the mud, we ended up washing them all last night and then employed every container we could find (e.g., roasting plans, boxes, baking sheets) to house them in piles two deep on the window sills.
There are well over 1000--which future Bob is going to have to deal with when they start to ripen. Man, is he gonna be pissed at me... . It did snow last night (mostly melted) so I think we made the right choice in the end. Not sure what the beans, corn and squash will look like when it warms up today.
The good news is that the canning closet is starting to look pretty full. I have adjusted quantities based on what we used and didn't use last winter and it feels pretty good. I will spend lunch maybe making more dried apple rings and racking off the first batch of cider.
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