The garden canning season came to a close today. Four jars of Salsa Verde were canned, and sit cooling on the kitchen counter. That wraps up the harvest canning for 2022!
I started canning in May, with Dandelion Jelly. At first the canning projects were sporadic, but in mid-July I canned daily until the end of September, then the projects slowed, and here we are, November 12, and the harvest canning is just now completed.
However, although canning is done for this season, preservation is not. Attila harvested celery today, which will be dehydrated and powdered. Tomorrow the kale will be harvested, dehydrated, and powdered. The Winter Keeper cabbages will also be harvested tomorrow, as will the Swiss chard. After all of this produce has been preserved, my attention will turn to the tomatoes, which are almost all ripened in the boxes in the basement, or frozen when ripe and fresh through the summer. The tomatoes will be thawed, run through the tomato mill, then reduced and flavoured with herbs to use as pizza sauce, which will be frozen. We should be done with garden preservation by the end of November, I hope.
We had three empty jars to spare. Now we will be using our preserved food for our daily meals, so the jars will be emptied, and will begin to accumulate, ready for next years harvest and preservation season.
This is to be our last “warm” day. The temperature has gone up to 11C, but tomorrow it will not rise above 5C, and be even cooler in the days to follow.
At last the report from the vascular surgeon arrived at the Nurse Practitioner’s office, two months after the first copy was sent to them, no explanation on their part as to the missing report, but at least it is there now, and I have a copy. There are no surprises in the report.
Because our hydro usage is trackable, through the provider’s web site, it is possible to determine how much it costs to run our oven. Of all the appliances in the house, the oven uses the most power, and usually doubles the daily power usage when it is used. So I’ve been wondering if there is a more energy efficient oven on the market. There are convection ovens, and air fryer ovens, which seem to be more efficient but cost a small fortune. It seems to me that the ovens on the market are not adequately insulated, so that they are all a lot less efficient than they could be. So far a truly energy efficient oven has not presented itself. I bake several times a week, an oven is essential here at Mist Cottage.
Attila has not had his flu shot, so we went to the local grocery store with a pharmacy, that indicated they were doing walk in vaccinations. This was not true, a sign at the pharmacy said come back Monday. Since we were there, we did a grocery shop. The store was very, very crowded, and the check out lines were to the back of the store. We waited patiently in line to check out, but as the person in front of us began unload their cart, the cashier told us she was closing, that meant we would need to start over again at the back of a line at the back of the store. What!! Ridiculous. Luckily she then changed her mind, and said she had misread the time. I find this a poor way to organize a grocery store lineups, and shift changes for the staff.
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Sat, Nov 12, 10:45 AM
10°C
FEELS LIKE 8
Partly cloudy
Wind 20 W km/h
Humidity 73 %
Visibility 23 km
Sunrise 6:59AM
Wind gust 31 km/h
Pressure 100.2 kPa
Ceiling 9100 m
Sunset 4:44 PM
Quote
“Where facts are few, experts are many.”
Lance Corporal Donald R. Gannon
1955 – 2002
Wow! That’s a lot of bounty. How big are your gardens, Maggie? I know we’ve gotten a lot of tomatoes off of just 2 cherry tomato plants, but sometimes I think you must have an acre or so being planted.
Our temps dropped from 60s/16C to 40s/5C, today. We’re getting rain here at the lake but they’re threatening snowsqualls.
We put our outdoor Christmas lights up yesterday and indoor lights, today. No tree yet but the lights are nice and festive.
Keep warm!
Thanks Joan! So far so good, nice and cozy. I guess you need to keep cool, such different climates!
Teri, our lot is just under 1/3 acre. We garden about 1/4 of that, so the gardens don’t cover a lot of ground really. Attila’s gardens look chaotic, very few straight rows, and lots of companion planting, it can look like a jungle at times. He also has some plants that produce vertically, rather than horizontally, which increases the yields.
To be honest, I am amazed at how much food comes out of his garden, it doesn’t seem possible, and yet, there it is, harvested and ready to process.
One thing about our garden, we use almost the whole plants of what we grow. We also keep every scrap of edible material, lettinglittle bits accumulate until there is sufficient quantity to do a canning load, or fill the dehydrator, or just freeze for later.
Your weather has caught up with us tonight, the temperature has dropped significantly now. No snowsqualls in our forecast.
I love Christmas lights, they are festive!