Monday, February 13, 2012

Preserving

Spaghetti Sauce for Winter-2.jpg
Spaghetti Sauce

Our first garden in Vermont was successful. Before the blight hit in September, we got enough tomatoes to can quarts of spaghetti sauce and tomatoes. We had over a couple of hundred pounds of cucumbers and made sweet relish, bread and butter pickles and dill pickles.

Making Pickles-1.jpg
Making pickles.

With all of the apples and chokecherries, John made apple, cherry, and apple-cherry jelly.

Making Jelly-1.jpg

Making Jelly-5.jpg

Making Jelly-2.jpg

John had planted a lot of squash seeds that he brought from New Hampshire. The trouble was, he had no idea what they were. They turned out to be Red Kuri squash, which I now like better than butternut. It is sweeter and more solid than butternut. It makes terrific pies. John processed and froze so much squash that we had to get another huge chest freezer!

Red Kuri Squash-2.jpg
Red Kuri squash on the vine.

Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax)-1.jpg
A Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) on a squash leaf.

Bee in Squash-9.jpg
Bumblebees would often pile up six deep in a squash blossom.

I never did take photos of the apple sauce, apples, pies and cider that John preserved. But I do know that he made over 20 gallons of cider! It was a very fruitful harvest!

_/\_/\_

1 comment:

Thank you for visiting and for your comments!