Feeding Six from the Garden
I've used my last quart of apple sauce.
Last September my kitchen was full of apples, and I was getting rather tired of processing them. We processed so many apples that I lost count somewhere around 77 quarts of apple sauce, 18 pints of apple butter, and 25 quarts of sliced apples.
I truly thought that we would have an abundance of apples to last to the next season. Yet, the apple butter is long gone, and I ran out of applesauce about three months before we will have apples again. There are still some of the sliced apples left, but only because the variety of apples I used last year did not can well this way. I plan to turn them into more sauce and butter.
Feeding my family of six takes an ever changing, and growing, amount of food. I could tell you how many loaves of bread or gallons of milk we need between grocery trips, but I had no concept of our food consumption in annual terms until we began gardening and preserving.
I keep record of how much I preserve each season and this record helps me to plan for the next season. So how much food did this family of six go through last year?
Green Beans - We had about 40 quarts from the previous season and canned an additional 55 quarts. There are still about 20 quarts left until the beans start producing in late June. So, in a year we eat about 90 quarts of beans.
Tomatoes - They did not produce well last year. We canned 17 quarts of sauce. It has been gone for some time. I'd guestimate we need triple that, or 51 quarts.
Corn - We froze 18 1/2 quarts of corn. This did last us until about a month ago, but only because I rationed it, knowing there wasn't much. Even though we could eat a lot more corn, we've decided to not plant as much. It takes a lot of space for what it produces. Someday we'd like to make another large space just for corn, until then we are only planting enough to eat in the summer.
Apples - I think we could easily eat 100 quarts of sauce in a year.
That is a lot of food, and it doesn't even count all that we eat fresh during the season.
Those are the staple items that we preserved last summer. This year we've added a few more vegetables for variety. Hopefully keeping this in mind will be a good motivator come August and September when I'm tired of picking and tired of canning.
Labels:
canning and preserving,
gardening,
groceries
5 comments:
Its amazing isn't it, you really don't think you use all that much of one thing till you have a boat load of it one day and are completely cleaned out the next.
2 seasons ago I canned enough applesause to feed an army, so when apple time came again last year I didn't can any applesauce because we still had I thought plenty, then all of a sudden I am kicking myself because we are completly out and the boys are begging for applesauce, So I cringe having to buy it and then the boys look at me like what is this stuff? LOL
Needless to say, this mama will be canning her heart out this year, and every year to follow.
I know its alot of work but I am actually really looking forward to harvest season this year.
There is something very satifying about seeing all those jars full on the shelf!!
Dana- sahm to 2 very active boys and one little one due 1/2010
Great post! I haven't thought of keeping a journal on what we consume from the garden each year. We just always seems to try and plant "enough" but this is a great way to know what really is enough.
Glad to see a post from you the online world misses your input. :)
Dana,
I look forward to the harvest too, but it does wear on me after the first month or so...
And congrats on your coming little one! :)
Eliza,
I just add a running total of canned items in the notebook where I keep track of what I planted etc.
Then I can count what is left on the shelves to see what we used.
Thanks for sticking with me and my very irregular posting:)
Thank you so much. I am very new at gardening (2nd season) and almost just as new at canning (helped Gramma when I was a kid). Your journaling what you put up from your garden has been very helpful. May I ask how your store your empties? I have a total of 36 qt. jars and will be adding to that... but once they were empty, I wasn't sure how to store them neatly and to prevent breakage.
Thank you,
Nickie
HSing SAHM to:
ds 10
ds 8
dd 5
ds 3
Nickie,
Storage....the bane of my existence...
I do not have a good system because I simply do not have much good storage space in this house. Ideally I would like to have shelves set up to store the empties and all the equipment. My mom had something like this in her basement when I was a kid.
I don't have a basement or a garage. My reality now is that I screw the lids back on the jars and put the empties back in the cupboard where they came from. Occasionally I try to reorganize to get all the empties together. Sometimes I will put the jars in boxes. Then I put a thick layer of newspaper between if I stack the jars two high. But I dont' bother wrapping the jars themselves. They are pretty sturdy and hold up to small moves and jostling.
Sorry I couldn't be more help! ;)
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