Canning season at the farmette

It's a beautiful day. Clear skies and sun. It's supposed to get up to 27 degrees Celsius. Mother Nature is really delivering a wallop elsewhere, with floods in Nevada and typhoons in the far east. At least the folks in Yellowknife will finally be able to go home this week after being evacuated due to wildfires.

Yesterday, we started our fall tradition of canning tomatoes. Actually, a couple of weeks ago, we made tomato apple chutney with the first of our measly harvest.

It's interesting that nearly everyone I know has had trouble with their crop this year.

I thought it was just me - and the fact that I stupidly planted the Co-op Romas on the May 24th weekend, instead of waiting until after June 1st, when the last frost had passed. You'd think I would have learned by now (!) I replanted from a different source, and haven't gotten near the number or size of tomatoes we usually harvest.

So, for the first time in our 11 years at the farmette, we had to supplement with store bought tomatoes to make a decent sized batch of sauce.

Here's Rob with our handy dandy grinder that spits out the seeds and skins to the right and the juice in behind. It was a real game changer when we got that a few years ago.

It took several hours to cook down and thicken up - we started the process just before lunch and finished at about five o'clock, in time to feed the felines.

We do the canning the traditional way, by sterilizing 500 millilitre jars, carefully placing the lids, screwing on the bands and then putting them in a boiling bath for 35 minutes. This time, we got five good seals and one dud that didn't seal. Which we put in the fridge so we can use it right away.

They do look lovely, though, once all the work is done, right?

The next batch will likely be next weekend or so, since the garden tomatoes are slow to ripen. Even some of the store bought ones were not ready for prime time.

We had to put the card table up in my office as a temporary ripening station, since the rodents made a meal out of them in the toolshed this year. Sigh. Anyhow, we will, once again, have nice sauce for spaghetti all winter. Until next week.

Gratuitous cat photo courtesy of Calvin, who likes to roll around in the grass on his outdoor (supervised) visits.