October tends to be a busy month for us and I am pretty sure most of it is self inflicted. This includes a mixture of hobbies that all need attention in the fall and the fact that I tend to be an extremely extra person in all facets of my life. This is the great canning story of October 2024.
What we have going on this October:
- My partner, Sammy, is a bow hunter so he is spending a lot of time in the woods/processing the deer meat he has
- Prepping my garden soil for the winter/spring and planting garlic
- Harvesting the last of the garden
- Usual cooking/cleaning/full-time job/bill paying that comes with this fun late-stage capitalism hell-hole we call living
- I am hosting bookclub this month and chose to create a murder mystery party
- Friends are coming into town for 5 days over Halloween
- My partner and I have our 3 year wedding anniversary
- Getting ready for Meg the Stallion and Halsey’s new albums BOTH TO DROP ON OCTOBER 25th
- Enjoying the beautiful weather, leaf-peeping, and being Spooky because Halloween is the best
OH YEAH – and I picked an ungodly amount of tomatoes and now have to can them all.
Canning tomatoes
When we first moved to Maine, we lived on a road that was rural farmland. One of our neighbors, Choc, has an old farm that he recreationally keeps going, but doesn’t necessarily have a lot of time to dedicate to it.
Choc told us to come down and help him pick some tomatoes from his garden and no one could have prepared us for how much we would be coming home with.
I only planned to get a couple pounds of tomatoes because I have already canned about 12 jars of tomatoes and I didn’t have many jars left. However, after seeing how many tomatoes he had left to pick, my brain couldn’t stop picking. Especially know we already hit our first frost here in Maine and most of the tomatoes will be wasted if not used now. This isn’t even close to picking his garden clean.
Needless to say, I will be canning my ass off for the next couple weeks. I ordered more jars and I have the green tomatoes attempting to ripen in paper bags.
I started the canning process last night by peeling all of the ripe tomatoes. From just the ripe tomatoes, I will be water-bathing 14 more jars of fresh tomatoes, which is awesome after my tomato blight crop producing less tomatoes than planned.
disclaimer
I am not saying any of this to complain about all the stuff I have going on in October. In reality, I love keeping myself busy. My family has always kept “farmers hours” of sorts. We go from the moment we wake up until bedtime and I really love it.
Having hobbies that bring me joy is something that makes me grateful to live everyday. Yes, I may be a little overtire because I had to stay up late processing a bunch of tomatoes after work, but as I mentioned before, I know it is my own doing.
Also, being able to help a neighbor use any leftover tomatoes and being able to can an ungodly amount of tomatoes in the process is amazing. I plan to take some jars of tomatoes to him and I will still have plenty for the winter time. Community living at it’s finest!
Most importantly, I love the extra things I do. I love that I am the type of person that will stay up a bit late canning tomatoes and watching The Broski Report. I don’t like the idea of waste and I love it when people look at me and call me crazy for all the stuff I do. It’s my kink.
Anyways, thanks for reading my stream of consciousness rambling. Subscribe to our blog!! Or else!!
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