I really have no idea how much that compares to what others can. I
know that my mother, when us kids were all still at home, would can
anywhere between 1500 to 2500 quarts of "stuff" per season, not to
mention the dehydrated stuff (my dad built her a Dehydrator that would
hold 15 3'x3' trays). We had what I would call a Huge garden, but I
have seen bigger ones. My dad was doing what I have seen called
"square foot" gardening long before I'd ever heard of it.
I remember mom having 2 copper boilers, the oblong ones, going on our
stove at the same time, pretty much 24/7.
'Course, my mom has probably worked herself to death. She is 65, and
looks like she's 80..., an old 80. I'll be very surprised if she sees
70. My folks were visiting a sister to the north of us, so we drove
up (through the first snow storm of the season... a 3 hour drive that
took 6) to see them. I was actually shocked how peaked she looked
since last year.
At any rate, our food "room" took up a full third of our basement (we
lived in a 4000 sq foot home). I have been invited into storage rooms
here in utah, and have learned not to show amusement when the people
brag at how hard they work, and they have three or four shelves of
canned goods...
I have made no effort to keep up with my mother. No way I could. I
am glad, however, that she taught me how.
So, just curiosity on my part. How many "quarts" do all y'all put up
in a typical season?
Ray
-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa K.V. Perry <lisakvperry AT gmail.com>
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 3:35 pm
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Apple harvest
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 12:11 PM, <rayzentz AT aim.com> wrote:
We just finished canning 85 quarts of applesauce last week, and I
don't
even like applesauce...
Not even your own homemade? Wow. Geez Ray, is that all?! I'm kidding. We
spent the day making apple sauce and are not yet done but we won't end
up
with 85 quarts. My guess is we'll have 18-20 quarts, but we still have 2
bushels to do something else with and half will be pie filling and the
remainder will be dried.
I put lemon juice in ours and cinnamon. No sugar.
The deer are so bad that I found half-eaten apples and 'crumbs' on our
mudroom porch deck - they came right up to the the dang porch last
night and
ate 1/5 of the huge box of apples we picked yesterday.