My Vacation

Every year, my vacation days from work are spread out to care for the garden. In the early spring, days are spent cleaning up the garden and planting the early vegetables (peas, radish, lettuce, beets, onions, carrots, spinach, broccoli, rapini, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, cucumbers). Late spring is for early harvest and preserving, and planting the summer vegetables. Late summer finds me in the busiest harvest of the year - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, summer squashes, beets, beans, corn, summer greens. It's also time to plant the fall vegetables (2nd round of tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, lettuce and greens, beets) and the greenhouse veggies for winter. Autumn will be time to put away apples, peanuts, and potatoes, onions, winter squash, and any second sowings of summer veggies. Winter is not only time to plan the garden, but also to tend to the greenhouse garden.

So, here I am with four days of vacation. The first day was spent in the garden, harvesting and planting the autumn sowing.

The second day, we were canning. Here's the take:

This is 7 jars of No Sugar Blueberry Jam - something I sort of made up from reading no sugar jars of fruit. It's pretty good, I opened a jar for breakfast.

4 jars of Dill Relish

5 jars of Dill Pickle Chips

8 jars of Dill Sandwich Stackers - including two with a hot pepper (see jar on left)

9 jars of Pickled Beets

4 jars of plain Red Beets

5 jars of Salsa (yes, that really was 5 jars - we ate 1 already and opened number 2 :)

There is only one problem - 

There is nowhere left for Vacation Day 3 

THE TOMATOES, oh my!  :)  Read on for step-by-step crushed tomato instructions!

Peace,

Dharma Dogs Farm