One of my dear sweet ward members called me on Friday and asked if I ever canned tomatoes. I said yes. She knew that we didn't do a garden this year because we were tired of paying hundreds of dollars to feed the deer. I know the church tells us we should plant one, and I love fresh garden vegetables, but after only getting less than 1/2 dozen tomatoes last year, a few zucchini, no peppers and no grapes, we decided to give it a rest.
Anyhow, back to my friend, she told me she was swimming in tomatoes because her husband never asked her and he planted way too many and her girls were too busy to take any this year and her husband is too old to be picking as many tomatoes as he planted and she didn't know what she would do with them all and would I come rescue her. So, I grabbed a crate out of the garage and headed to her house. She answered the door, saw my crate and promptly told me it wouldn't be near enough. As she proceeded to take me through her house and out to her back patio, I laughed as I could see she wasn't kidding. I should have brought a life preserver instead of a crate because she literally was "swimming in tomatoes" or should I rephrase that as "drowning in tomatoes". She had 4 kiddie pools full of tomatoes and another 12-15 flats of tomatoes around that and "more in the garden waiting to be picked."
So, I filled up my crate without making a dent in her flood and went home. Yesterday, I spent the day processing tomatoes. It is tiring work, but really quite rewarding and fun. As I was about 1/2 way through, I remembered that I had told another friend in my ward that I would teach her how to bottle tomatoes if I got more this Summer. So I called her and she couldn't come that day, which was good, because I was through all the teaching parts and just processing, so we scheduled for her to come Monday. So, guess what I will be doing on Monday!? I bottled tomato sauce and more pints of diced tomatoes yesterday and I'm going to try bottling some spaghetti sauce on Monday along with more tomato sauce/juice.
I got the crate I picked up the other day all done, so Trevin and I went back and got 3 more crates for us to work on for Monday. He was a great helper and was excited to get to feed their pot bellied pig after we were done getting tomatoes.
1 comment:
I'm jealous (and now know why you missed a speed scrap!). We didn't plant any tomatoes, but our neighbor who did lost most to the deer too so we were glad we didn't bother. I was wanting to do spaghetti sauce...maybe next year I'll have you show me how!
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