Canning season has come to an end for 2012 with the processing of the pumpkins. While in the midst of it all, it seemed like I was canning every day. Now that we are done, I was surprised at how little I was able to get done out of our garden. I am thankful for the Back to Eden approach and am looking forward to doing it again next year, but I was really surprised by the total overall. I had such high expectations for our first gardening experience! I am trying to keep in mind that this year we were suffering from a horrible drought and some of our plants just didn't seem to produce, such as the Brussels sprouts.
I have updated the food preservation page to include the totals of everything preserved for 2012. Now that the season is over, I was able to put it into alphabetical order and sort it by size, so it is a little easier to read. It will be interesting to see how 2013 will do compared to 2012 now that we have a better grasp of the garden and canning. I also have to remind myself that this was only my second year of canning, too!
In all, we put away 8.5 gallons (freezer bags) in the big freezer and 93 half-pints, 84 pints, and 187 quarts in the pantry. We are still in the process of organizing our pantry, adding additional shelving and just getting it organized overall. Once we finish getting it cleaned up and organized for winter, I will post some pictures to share with everyone.
We are already in the process of looking ahead to 2013 and are considering a few new things. We are researching greenhouses and are actually thinking of replacing our shed with an assemble-yourself greenhouse. This should help with seed starting come February. I also watched a phenomenal video on youtube that taught how to start seeds to ensure proper growth. I am really excited to try out some of their ideas. We are looking at expanding the garden into the flower gardens around the house by planting the culinary herbs, herbal tea plants and medicinal plants close to the house. This year, we are ordering our heirloom seeds from a provider that we recently heard about, www.mypatriotsupply.com. With the new herbs and medicinal plants, I had to order a book so that I could learn how to use them! Finally, I also ordered a book on owning a root cellar. We used to have a root cellar in our basement that someone cemented over. Hopefully this book will give us some ideas on how to either restore or build a new root cellar for more storage options.
Now that summer is over, we are back to working on various projects around the house. Thus far, we have reorganized the laundry room. All year long, the washer and dryer have been driving me crazy by "walking" around! I was also having trouble adjusting to having the washer on the right and the dryer on the left as I lived with it in a reverse formation for the past eight years. We initially tried balancing the appliances using cardboard, but they walked right off that too! It was getting really frustrating and annoying, especially since we have a metal capped sewer pipe of some sorts right in that area - and the washer seemed to be constantly hitting it, making even more noise. We finally solved all the problems by switching the two appliances and getting everything adjusted. I am so happy! (Isn't it amazing how the simplest things can put a smile on our face?). Our last improvement to the laundry areas was the addition of a shelving unit like we are using in the pantry. This gives me a great place to store laundry supplies and other project odds and ends.
We also hung the original pantry door back up. The door was found lying on the floor against the outer pantry wall. Unfortunately, it was buried behind so much clutter that we could barely get to it. As part of our basement clean up project, we got that area all cleaned up and decided to hang the door. We weren't really sure why it was taken off to begin with, but suspected it had something to do with the hinges, since they were missing. To our disgust, we discovered that the door had been removed because the piping to the furnace was hung too low, causing the door to only be opened a few inches. Thankfully, this was an easy fix - we simply had to move a supporting block of wood and hang a few inches higher the pipe supports. Now the door can swing open freely. The door needs some work and we are missing some of the hardware, but it still is a neat thing to see, especially since most of the original doors were removed prior to us owning the house.
I'm sure that we will be working on a lot more projects in the house over the winter months - such as working on the wood floors! Unfortunately, we need to use our heat guns to do that project and, really, who wants to use a heat gun in the middle of summer!
Next time, I'll try to have more pictures. Til then, God bless!
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