Spent my entire life from childhood till when I moved out of my parents house making home made jam. We grew our own grapes. We had cases upon cases of them stacked along with grape juice, peach nectar, and canned any sort of Vegi you can imagine. My dad grew up on a farm and we stayed busy. My mom was a city girl. But she learned how to do it all. Weekend mornings were prepping the food and all afternoon into evening the canning was non stop. We didn’t buy a single fruit or vegetable till my dad stopped gardening in his 80’s. This was not really a garden. But more like a small farm lol.
You guys were homesteaders before it was a craze...lol.
Sounds wonderful.
We grew up with lots of fruit trees, but I can’t remember my folks ever canning.
I DO remember loving summer, though...for all of the fresh fruit.
Wow. We had about a quarter acre garden. That kept us somewhat busy in the growing months. Nothing like you all though. I do remember some steaming hot days in the kitchen.
We also had chickens. Butchering day was not my favorite. My parents always put me on the feather plucking station. I didn’t mind taking care of the hens the rest of the time, though. They were entertaining.
So much more healthy for all of the family. Now that we are retired, we do a lot of that too. We have about 25 dwarf trees and berry bushes for fruit. They are just now starting to really have some production.
Hubby has put in a new garden patch every summer since 2010. So we now have at least 1000 sq. ft. We continue to put in edible perennials for when we get older and slow down.
We are well blessed with native Black Walnut trees, Persimmon Trees, elderberry, black berry and dew berry bushes which were just on the property when we bought it.
Hubby is planning on building a root cellar this summer. I do a lot of canning and dehydrating. I freeze some stuff-mostly when I have too much to handle at once. Then later I do something with it. For example Wash off tomatoes and the them dry. Put into a bag and freeze. Later make tomato sauce or salsa.