Mother always canned as much as she thought we would eat until the next harvest.   I’m sure that was because she grew up on a Midwest farm and if they didn’t put food up in season, they wouldn’t have eaten throughout the winter.   I have local grocery stores and at this point, it isn’t as though we wouldn’t eat, but rather a carry over that I am happy to continue.   And the food I put up is of better quality and fresher than the store.  If we do have a power outage or whatever, we will be good for at least a week.  After that we need water (we are on a well), a blender and a cook stove for our breakfasts.

So this morning I canned the beets and as many of the pears as were ripe.   There are still 2.5 boxes of them.  I didn’t realize that they were bred to keep so long.   If I had kept them in a cool dark place, they might have lasted until February.  But I purchased them for canning, so wanted them ripe by now.   Next year, I will plan differently.

This afternoon we went to get the potatoes and carrots.    The farmer had just delivered our orders to the co-op, so they are really right out of the ground.  The potatoes should last a good part of the winter and I will can half the carrots now and see how long the others last – or maybe they will just get eaten.   I didn’t plant carrots this year, but we do still have potatoes in the garden.   So between the ones we still have to dig and these, I’m hoping that will be enough to last.