Canning

cornstalks to compost

The gardens at Booty Family Farm are being put to bed, so it’s time to store up some of the goodness for the winter. Here’s a photo of Matt on the tractor and Stephen on the ground downloading a load of cornstalks to the compost pile. How do they break down those long stalks into smaller pieces? Why, with a chainsaw of course. There’s a lot of MacGyvering on a farm!

Freezers are useful for storing fruits and veggies, but our chest freezer is still filled with spectacular Belted Galloway beef (purchased from a local farm), along with various and sundry baked goods and a freezer insert for our ice cream maker. (Yes, I have priorities.) So why not go old-timey and haul out the canning pot? I enjoy the whole process, from selecting the produce to cleaning and chopping, to boiling the jars and putting it altogether. Old-fashioned home making truly can be an art. Check this out!

salsa, applesauce, & tomatoes

And canning is certainly not gender-limited. When Rachel and Stephen were clearing out freezers in my mom’s basement, they came across some big bags of peaches that had been squirreled away summer-before-last. (A late frost this spring zapped the buds on the fruit trees. So sad.) What to do? Stephen made peach jam! And he made grape jam from Concord grapes that my dad started many years ago. It’s not anything like that tepid supermarket grape jelly; it’s not-too-sweet, very grapey, and a gorgeous deep purple. This morning I put some on a slice of homemade multi-grain sourdough toast. Heaven!

Diane cans like crazy all summer, from dilled garlic scapes curled elegantly in little jars to cucumber and zucchini relishes, dilly beans, and pickled garlic. (Do you see a pattern?) After living in the Southwest for more than thirty years, I’m all about salsa, and Steve has kindly cultivated hot peppers for me — this summer jalepeños, serranos, and poblanos. (I get a phone call on a late winter morning when Steve is pouring through seed catalogs. He wants to know if I have any special requests. How great is that?) Check out this beauty!

Poblano Perfection!

Boiling jars and heating up the salsa

There’s a lot of chopping involved in salsa making, but the effort is absolutely worth it. The result is a salsa with layers of flavor that simply can’t be found in a supermarket product. This summer I used the following Booty Farm organic ingredients: a variety of hot peppers, green bell peppers, tomatoes (including some super-sweet, golden-orange cherry tomatoes like the one pictured with the poblano pepper), onions, garlic, and corn. Add vinegar, salt, and a handful of black beans, and jumping Jehosaphat, that is some good salsa.

I dropped off an 8-ounce sample jar to Steve along with a little bag of tortilla chips and we had this text message exchange before I even got to the end of Mount Israel Road:

Steve: Phenomenal! (chili, tomato, and trophy emoticons)

Jane: That was fast! (No emoticons because I was driving and talking into my phone.)

Steve: I was hungry.

And such is life on the side of our mountain in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. I am overwhelmed by how privileged I am to live in this extraordinary place with such wonderful friends and neighbors. (And the best salsa on the planet, to boot!)