Speaking of Bare Cupboards

I like putting away clean canning jars, but it’s sobering to see all the empty spaces on the shelves.  It’s a long time before canning season begins.

I’m getting low on tomato products too – although we don’t need nearly as much as we used to before DH found out solanums were on the hit list of gastric distress.  I am still planning on canning lots of tomatoes this year.  My rule of thumb is two years worth, which gives me room for a crop failure, ( like last year) illness, etc.  I strive for roughly 52 units (quarts, pints, pounds) of whatever I am preserving, and if there is a bounty or bumper crop (I prefer those terms to glut) I double the 52 unit figure.  I’m not saying you need 52 quarts of dill pickles – you need to analyze how you cook and eat, and only preserve what your family actually likes to eat.   How much salsa do you eat, how much tomato sauce or diced tomatoes do you use each week?  We don’t eat much salsa, but I cook with it quite a bit.  A pint a week isn’t too much to have on hand.  Of course there are always weeks that you don’t use any tomato sauce or salsa, and that is where your extras come from for your pantry.

Toms, pre-thinning.

The tomato seedlings are doing great – well actually, all the seedlings are doing great.  I wish heartily it would warm up though, we just finished afternoon chores, came in and got situated near the fire and it had started snowing, again.  Sigh.

Despite the cool weather the greenhouse is comfortable even though it is unheated – at least there is no wind and rain, and on a cloudy day it is still much warmer than outside and a good place for dog napping.

Faithful trudger and all around farm pup.

Ah yes, fresh greens soon – even I get tired of kale and cabbage.

There is something about the ritual of planting those seeds.  As the canning shelves empty, the planting season begins in earnest.  Sometimes I think people really hunger for that connection as much as they hunger for good food.  Which explains why most people don’t like grocery shopping but love gardening.

Little Sweets lettuce.

My mom taught me when I was a little kid just how to roll those tiny lettuce seeds between my thumb and forefinger, it is second nature now.  Like typing, you feel when you make a mistake, too many seeds in one cell, and then you have to thin.  And you have wasted a seed.  I don’t think about it much now when I seed, it just comes naturally and it does me good to glance over at my daughter seeding and see her rolling seeds too.  Gardening is about more than just food, I love gardening.

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