Holding Off
uilding a fire in the cookstove that is. For now it serves as a catch-all for all the milk jars, cream jars, canning jars, apples, zucchini, butter, corn and anything else you can think of in a farmhouse kitchen. During the summer, the flotsam and jetsam of farm life find their way to the cookstove. It’s not been cold enough to have a fire during the day, so each night I have been lighting a fire in the furnace in the basement. Not a hot or long-lasting fire, but just enough to take the chill off after dark and to preheat the hot water a little before it enters the electric hot water heater.
Hopefully canning season will end before I have to clear the deck for a fire. Still to go - applesauce, one last box of tomatoes, more prune butter and juice, and I think I’m done. Oh yeah and carrots from the greenhouse 
More on the reasoning behind that later…
Do you still have lots of preserving to do or are you done with that task for the year?
Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
I did two batches of apple butter a couple of days ago, and bottled five gallons of grape wine and five of cider — there are three more baskets of apples, but I think I’m maxed. The garden vista at the kitchen is mostly kale, sunchokes, and leeks right now — think I’ll just leave ‘em right there and go visit with a friend.
Risa, I’m with you! Visiting sounds much more enjoyable at this point
Apples, apples and apples. A few pounds of tomatoes from my neighbour. Spuds that were curing in the barn need to be stored. Apart from that I think preserving is slowing down. My whole kitchen kind of looks like your stove – there’s just always so much on the go. That stove by the way is a thing of beauty. Have you had it a long time?
SSF, Yummy! It’s nice to have that winding down feeling!
The stove has been there since 1917, it cost $84.00 and was purchased with the profits from the prune harvest that year. We had it refurbished in ’84 and we about died with nothing to lean on, during the two months it was gone
I’m still trying to stay ahead of a windfall harvest of Keiffer pears that are ripening in the garage – a friend’s tree was covered with them and I hauled home 7 bushels at least. Have made pear juice, pear butter, pear sauce, pear wine, pear pie filling (like apple, only pear). Still want to try to make a batch of pear cider (perry). After that, it will be a walnut shucking fest, as it was a bumper crop year for them as well, with the harvest so far at 6 big feed bags full out in the garage, awaiting. Then I need to make a batch of saurkraut, and another friend has turnip and mustard greens for the taking, which I’ll can up in pints for some green jars on the pantry shelf. Not bad for not having a garden this summer!
All you people with your talk of bumper walnut crops – I don’t know what’s going on around here, but it’s dismal at least where walnuts are concerned : (
Walnuts to spare here too.
Apple products (sauce, chips, cider).. And a few more pickled beets.
I have an Aga in my kitchen that gets put out in the summer & boy does it get covered with kitchen ‘stuff’. Lol.
Relit it a couple of weeks ago and had all this homeless stuff which I ended up putting in the oven of the electric range. sigh.
Still upto the eye balls in cooking apples and still getting tomatoes from the glass houses.
Going to try some green tomato recipes, also just got some apples and more pears from an orchard friend. Maybe sauce or butter.
Lots of windfall cooking apples from a neighbour after my tree failed to crop. Because they need processing quickly (and my freezer is nearly full) I feel pressured by apples! I know I should just be thankful for a winter’s worth of apple sauce, apple butter and…? I may have to bottle some – that could be fun as I’ve not processed apples that way before.
Otherwise a pretty poor year for tomatoes, beetroot, carrots, parsnips and strangely enough, poor for courgettes (zucchini) too. Normally I can’t give those away fast enough!
I am ashamed to say that i am green with envy over that cook stove, I have a wood stove with a cast iron top but I can only fit one pot on it, (we eat a lot of stew in the winter!)..wanna swap? c
C, I think I’ll hang on to it – it’s pretty special
Looks like your stove is a hot spot in your kitchen…lol
ketchup, bbq sauce, tomatoes, peaches, jams, pickles, apple sauce. freezer filled with blanched corn and berries, pie fillings, rhubarb, broths .. waiting for grass fed beef, pig, turkey. 17 chickens cut, sorted-freezer sealed. on to stacking wood. then i’ll rest
Rest, what’s that??
haha, that’s what our stove starts to look like over summer too…..
Pears here too. Today is chicken stock day. I make quarts and freeze it, as there’s not energy to do it weekly, as you usually do. Yesterday was slicing and freezing bacon, and making ground chicken and freezing that. Tomorrow I tackle the pears.
There’s still kale and chard in the garden, now we’ve had 2 hard frosts in the last week. Brussels sprouts too. Yup, still lots to do.
Just set green tomatoes to ferment; a new recipe am trying. Canned several quarts of grape juice; have at least one more batch to finish up. And some last raisins still drying. Would like to be done. But still need to finish off a bunch of apples, in one form or another — a second batch of apple butter, dried apples, apple filling — can some marinated peppers, do something with the last of the green tomatoes, deal with a last bit of basil and … Hey! That might actually be about it! I devoutly hope. Though there is still several pounds of tuna I was supposed to have defrosted and canned some weeks back …
And quinces, once they ripen up.
nm, it seems like it will never end!