We were so blessed with a great first year crop! We had just the perfect weather for green beans and tomatoes and had them everywhere! We took on the task of canning this year since we had such an over abundance in our garden! It wasn’t easy being extremely pregnant/postpartum, and unfortunately some produce got wasted because I just couldn’t find the time to get it canned, but it made me super excited for next year making our garden twice the size and me not being pregnant or having a baby.

Green Beans

I was pretty nervous about the pressure canning just because I had never done it before, but it actually ended up going SO well. We did it in my grandma’s basement that she so graciously offered. she had never don’t pressure canning, only water bath but she was a ton of help.  We ended up getting 21 quarts of canned beans!! We were more than pleased with this and had all of them seal except for one that I messed with. Then the day before Duke was born we helped Heather can her beans at their house. We did another 21 quarts and felt really confident about hers. All the hard work musta did the trick for labor because Duke was born less than 24 hours later. Can’t wait to do lots more

Tomatoes

About 10 days postpartum me and my grandma had a spaghetti sauce and salsa making day. It takes quite a long time for the sauce to just sit and simmer so that took quite a long while. Unfortunately I overdid it a little being so newly postpartum and I had to lay on the couch while grandma did most of the work. They both ended up tasting delicious and next year we hope to do a ton more and not let so many tomatoes go to waste

Sweet Corn

The Boender’s graciously offered that we could pick sweet corn because they had plenty of extra. We didn’t have the room in our garden for it this year so we were thankful. When Duke was 5 days old we bagged sweet corn at Carol’s house to freeze and be able to eat all winter. Wyatt played and Duke slept. Carol cooked the corn and I shucked it all. Kyle was the jack of all trades picking, shucking, cutting, and bagging it. We ended up baggin 45 bags of corn and then took 35 for ourselves. I think this will be a perfect amount for every year

Already looking forward to next year and hopefully learning more and using this experience to our favor. I don’t want to go too over my head though because we are building a house and will be busy with that but I can’t wait!