Canning Green Beans!

So after spending the entire evening on Saturday shelling zipper peas, snapping green beans and washing every pot and pan in this kitchen twice, I spent most of Sunday morning cleaning the rest of the kitchen up and preparing to attempt my first ever try at canning... Yep, old school canning! (Super thanks to the our friends, the Parkers, who loaned us their pressure canner!) Hubby spent a huge chunk of the morning stuffing blueberries into freezer bags... so that freed me up to go retrieve my Grandmother's quart jars from the storage shed. Next up was washing the jars... and then I remembered that we threw out all of her metal lids and rings when we moved into the house because they were rusted. All I can say is thank the Lord for the dollar stores in this small town! Hubby scored new lids and rings and a whole flat of pint jars for whatever else we decide to can later. After washing the green beans four times (which took forever since there was probably 4 gallons of beans) we finally started the actual canning process. I have to say what a chore this whole canning thing is! I do not know how my Grandmother did this every year all by herself. I would say that the entire amount of time we spent was about 8 hours to can 14 quarts of green beans and froze the remaining 4 quarts. Whew! I am just tired thinking back to Sunday...

I do have to say that I am very, VERY proud of my Grandmother's antique mason jar collection. There are so many different ones and she has a ton of jars in quart and jelly jar sizes.

Hubby loved to stare at them while they bubbled in the jars long after they were removed from the pressure canner.

We are very proud of our first run at canning. Next up, is freezing the zipper peas... just hoping to score a few more from the local garden stand in town to go with them!

Picking, Shelling & Snapping on a Saturday Night!

After the blueberries were picked and delivered to the house, we made our way to the farm to pick all of the green beans ready for picking. It was quite a search and rescue scavenger hunt to find the matured beans in the bean vine arbor they created because we planted the rows WAY too close together... Plus it was hot and we were both in close quarters wedged between the beans and the corn on one side and the beans and the peas on the other long side. But, we managed through it... (even though child labor would have been easier to get to the beans).

We also picked some other things... Funny cherry tomato!

Plus my ONE lone cabbage that made it... out of 7 original plants!

The purple hulled pea pods are starting to turn purple... Maybe a week or so and will be covered up in picking, shelling and freezing peas!

I would say the harvest was quite bountiful on Saturday!

The harvest made a great passenger on the way home... so much that I called my Mother to come over and help us snap beans Saturday evening. And then we stopped by the veggie stand in town and scored a little over half a bushel of zipper peas!

To say the least, we had our work cut out for us!