I was actually on a beach the other day with a good man, it was a naked beach and we were a few of the only people there. Now not a lot of men would sit naked beside each other on a beach but we did, as natural nudists would... we talked about many things, like making arrow heads out of glass melted in bonfires, and we got on to canning... and i heard the Parker theory on canning. If the stuff in the can changes colour or shows activity over time, then this is a bad thing. Indeed you can rely on observation skills, and you should of course when you are canning. As a trained scientist my sterile senses are well honed, and of course liable centers on food preservation will error on the side of caution. However i will not give away any of my canned tomatoes this year since it is my first time... i will give away my pickled beets, and my pickled kohlrabi as there is enough salt in sugar and vinegar (the acid) that I'm not too worried about poisoning people. If i poison myself then it is a lesson to me, if i poison somebody else, then yes it still is a lesson to me, clearly a less painful lesson to me, but it just wouldn't be fair.
I still like my chances, i believe the thing to do is eat the batch i did without following the instructions early in the fall out of the fridge rather than let it hang around on a shelf for a few years.
It's weird how we have an innate mistrust of our abilities to preserve food... clearly an conspiracy to help convince consumers that the best and safest food is the one canned in a mega factory by people working minimum wage and sold in a reputable store that is trying to bust unions.
My point is we can do it, pioneers did it without running water, we can do it... have faith in yourself and continue, even though their not with you. I have been making beer for a few years now and never had a bad batch... well there was that vanilla beer that was horrible, but it wasn't bad like make you sick bad. Now my sister who is a classic consumer told me you can't make good beer at home... she said the same thing about pizza... i beg to differ. Actually i differ and i am right. You can't do anything if you believe you can't do it before you start... that is of course why gardening is the perfect introductory sport to self sufficiency. Plant needs water, soil and light, it takes care of the rest.
Now why all this talk in a gardening blog? I see it like this... the only thing more annoying than somebody who doesn't grow food is the person that grows it and then wastes it. Think of it as preparation for the apocalypse... you know it's coming, of course the earth will be a toxic wasteland, but just in case it isn't you need to know how to survive. You could also argue that if we all did this perhaps we could feed each other and be done with this insane consumer society, which of course isn't going to happen either given that our species is polluted with self serving hair trigger responding half wits.
OK, so we have to find a happy place as our planet goes swirling down the toilet, and it feels good to grow and preserve food. Trust me on that one... make food not war, share food not hate, build food connections not walls, grow food not indifference, can tomatoes not shitty pop songs fronted by gyrating salespeople.
Go show up to a party with a big vegetable dish that you grew and people will say "Oh my God that is amazing"... but really it is simple stuff, but next to the consumer that brought high fructose cupcakes in a plastic container you can hold your head high.
Lets get back on point here... how to attack your tomato preservation. Some are just frozen in bags, some are reduced and canned and you will season it into what you want it to be when the time comes... will it be chile, will it be a minestrone soup, will it end up in a lasagna, on a pizza, on pasta. My wife tells me you can salt and bake them and then freeze them to add flavour to a dish down the road. Clearly you will want options down the road. Sometimes it seems kind of silly because canned tomato products are pretty cheap, and given the labor and costs you might actually be losing money, but remember never let money be your barometer to happiness. This is all just education for when you live on a farm in isolation and you don't have the options of buying what you want when you want, it's about the pride of being a maker, a doer, somebody who is not afraid to take their destiny in their own hands and pound something out. Every year you do something you get better at it, it becomes less of a confusion and more of a fine art. Always experiment... go down with your ships, it is the only way you really learn.
You see i set out this year to have a king hell tomato harvest, and this i accomplished... i have been giving lots away, but to me it would be the failure of failures to not see how far i can stretch this harvest to feed the family. I often think how much farmland do i need to feed us for the year... clearly i like the processed snack treats... i am a natural glutton. But in my mind i see myself as an organic sustenance farmer... all i need is a forest, a wood stove a 10 acre farm and a 1000 acre barley field, and a 14 acre hops plantation. I was joking a 100 acre barley filed should be sufficient.
How do you eat chard? Do you steam it and hit it with butter and parmesan cheese, or do you hit it with soy sauce? I have chard by the truckload... perhaps i should pickle it. Can you do that? Of course you can do anything.
My purple heirloom beans are coming in now... i grabbed the seeds from a neglected garden last year... some silly fool just never picked them... i witnessed most of them just rot into the ground but i grabbed a few pods and that is what we are eating now. I was late on the beans because i filled the garden with peas early in the season... i like the combo. I planted the beans when the peas died down and now is their time. You have to love this long Oregon growing season, being able to space your crops out like that.
Also i noticed that my blueberries are really growing now that my house is not littered with squirrels who have the bad habit of chewing off the fresh growth. It has made a huge difference... so remember if you have a neighbour who feeds squirrels you can stop that nonsense by trapping the bastards... just make sure the neighbour sees the squirrel in the trap... this will horrify the said neighbour and they will call the authorities and the authorities will tell the neighbour to make sure that the trapper kills the pest on their own property, which will in turn motivate the neighbour to make a plea deal to free the rodent on the condition that the stop feeding the rodents and your problems will be solved.
Also never give up on killing slugs... if you were to call somebody a slug that would be an insult right? I rest my case.
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