A Satifying Afternoon

Over the weekend I rode my bike over to Grabill, about 5 miles away, to pick up some greeting cards at the Dollar General and some canning jar lids and bands at the hardware store. It was a lovely bike ride, all the more enjoyable because I took care of a couple of errands.

I needed canning jar lids and bands because of the amount of ripe tomatoes we have at this time, I can only eat so many tomatoes by myself! I headed out to the garden and pretty soon had a large bowl piled high with tomatoes. Our grandson Peter, who is six, was very, very interested in the whole process of canning tomatoes. It was a nice activity and didn't take too long as I only had one canner load to process. I finished with eight pints of tomatoes. I should have at least one, possibly two more batches to do.

  Back in the day, we would plant around fifty tomato plants and it would be quite a chore canning them all, a large bowl of tomatoes is much less daunting then several five gallon buckets stacked high with tomatoes. 

For me there is something very satisfying about jars of freshly canned produce cooling on the counter.