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It’s never been a competition, if it was I would be in second place every year, which by the way, I am annually by a long shot. I start like she does with strawberries, then because of her living quite a bit further south, her garden comes in much quicker and before long she has put up 2,000 to 3,000 jars eventually hitting a season’s total always exceeding 5,000 jars of canned goods. I run out of my wanting to can at about a thousand jars.
She has four canners, I have two, she’s 75 years old, if it’s 80 outside, so much the better to her. I can’t can in that kind of continual heat. Lord she sure can.
We give some out what we can as gifts, one thing I can is pepper jelly, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t can enough of it. All the what I consider regular stuff, apple pie filling, jams, jellies, tomatoes, what have you, some like some of it, some none of it, but everybody these days has pepper jelly on their list of: I want some.
And peppers, of course the hotter the better, the redder the better. It’s not even October and I’ve put up over 100 half pint jars, we have two left on the shelf today.
Yesterday, four of us picked 90 gallons of tomatoes, 60 gallons of various squash, so for the next few days at least, I won’t be canning pepper jelly.
- The Trout Whisperer
