Preserving the harvest

 

The weather this August has been cool, wet and very grey.  Many people are saying how many plants in their gardens are slow to ripen.  My tomatoes are definitely on a slow pace to ripen.  So slow that I worry they may not ripen at all this year.   There were no Amish Paste Tomato plants in the garden centres this year, so I had to settle with the only Roma style tomato plant that I could find which was San Marzano which has a longer time to ripen.  Next year I may break down and start my own tomato plants, to get the ones I know will work in my garden and climate.

Because all the tomatoes are still green, I ended up buying 1/2 bushel of tomatoes at the market.   There were few to choose from because even the farmers are having issues with slow ripening this year. They were still not quite ripe enough, but luckily I was away all day after purchasing them.   I ducked out of the house until the evening on Saturday so when I started canning on Sunday, they were just starting to be perfect.   I got over half of them done, in 2 canning pot batches, and a third on Sunday finished them off.   I have 20 pint/500 ml jars in the pantry.  My hot water bath canner will do 7, 500 ml jars at a time.  If I can get at least two more batches done, there should be enough for the winter.  

The blackberries are also ripening this year.   The past few years  I haven't had enough berries to harvest, but this year the patch has finally matured enough.  They are late though and with the weather, I'm only able to harvest every 2 or 3 days.  However I already have 785 g of berries and there are still many more unripe berries on the brambles.   I'm washing them and tossing them in the freezer.  My plans are that when or if I get enough berries, I will let them thaw and push them through a sieve to remove the seeds.  Then I'll make seedless blackberry jam.  With the batch of apricot jam I made earlier, while not having a great variety, there will be more than enough jam and 2 of my favourite kinds.

A simple rug and jam -

The loom is dressed and I've started weaving.  I've got it set up for 2 rugs.   I only put 2 on because I've found that with any more, I have to cut the first 2 off and then retie the warp.  It's not an awful chore, but I know that the last rug might take a while if I put on too many at a time.  I need to make a house warming gift, so letting a project languish at this time, is not a good thing.   I know with only 2 rugs, they will get done in a timely fashion.    I purchased 10 cones of 4/8 cotton, in natural a couple of years ago, meaning to make guitar straps.   I was going to dye all the colours I needed, only it turned out that a) dyeing all the string for the colours I needed turned out to be a lot more work than I wanted for this project and b) the 4/8 inkle woven straps were just a bit thinner than I expected.  While I knew they were strong enough, they bend and fold a bit more easily than I'd like.  I'm using one on my open back banjo and it's serviceable and pretty, but a bit fiddly sometimes.

Anyway, with all that natural 4/8, I had to dye the warp stripe.   It is a dark teal blue.    The blue warp shrank a bit in the dyeing process, which made for an interesting time dressing the loom.   The weft is a sheet that my daughter gave me when she cleaned out her closets.   It was a fitted sheet, so a little less fabric, but there are also 2 pillow cases, if I need them. I like the way the dark and light warp stripes are so effective when woven up.    I had been looking for a jersey sheet.   Jersey t-shirts and sheet make awesome rugs, but I didn't think I had enough of any one colour and I wasn't sure that weft stripes, along with the warp stripes would be effective in this case.

blackberries were purple in real life, not bright red.

 I made some seedless blackberry jam.  I had a whole set of photos to show the process and I was going to do a blog post on making it.   However I think I messed up when I transferred the photos to the computer and then since they were on my phone, I deleted them.   Yay me!

after much fiddling with colour, I left them red .

After heating up the blackberries, I ran them through a strainer to remove the seeds.   Blackberries have a lot of seeds and mine are semi feral, so pretty seedy in comparison to pulp for some of them at least.   I much prefer the seedless jam, which requires pushing them through a strainer of some kind.  I wish I had a food mill of some sort, but I don't, and I couldn't remember what I did the last time I made it.  I first tried a plastic colander, which let many of the seeds through, requiring me to re-strain the batch.  Then I tried a wire mesh strainer, which was too fine.   The next one I tried has a tiny hole in it, that got much bigger before I noticed it, requiring me to re-strain the whole batch to get all the seeds out, again.   Finally I got a strainer which worked adequately and it took a lot of effort, pushing the berries through.  The aim is to get the juice and the pulp through the strainer but not the seeds.   You don't want a clear jelly, but a jam, without the seeds which get caught in your teeth.

I addedd lemon juice and sugar.  I used pectin because I didn't want to spend a lot of time in front of the stove.  When it looked right, I popped it into hot jars, put new lids (always new lids) and finger tightened the rings down.  Then they go into the hot water bath canner for 10 minutes, once it starts to boil again.   I set a timer, so I have an audible reminder to take the jars out of the canner.   I lift them out of the water bath, and set the jars on the counter to cool.    I know every one who cans jars of anything, waits and listens for the pings that say the vaccuum seal is secure and all is good  with this batch.   They all pinged.   I opened a jar, as there wasn't any left for tasting, after the jars were filled.  It's good - not overly sweet and very blackberryish.   Yum..

I'm still finding spatters of blackberry pulp around the kitchen, in places it shouldn't be; the stove backsplash, counters, cupboard doors.  It was a messy but delicious job.    I've made apricot and blackberry jam.   I was trying to decide between plum or cherry for my final batch of the year.  Both of those rank very high for flavour.  I'd better decide soon as the blue plums won't be available for much longer.