I spent some time on Thursday and Friday re-acquainting myself with my canning equipment. My experience with canning anything is limited to a few jars of blackberry jelly I made about 6 years ago. I’m hoping to expand my repertoire this year, so I needed to figure out what I actually had. The canners have been gathering dust on top of the fridge for the last 5 years. The jar lifter and other gadgets were crammed in the back of a drawer. The jars themselves, including what seemed like an enormous stack of vintage jars passed along to us by our friends Meghan & Nathan, were up in the attic. The lids… well, aside from a package of pretty blue gingham lids, it appears we don’t own any. And now that I’m looking more carefully and thinking in terms of quarts and pints, I swear that stack in the attic gets smaller every time I look.
I did manage to gather together enough supplies to make and can a tiny batch of rhubarb jam, pineapple in very light syrup, and pickled pineapple. The rhubarb came from our yard, while the pineapple was an impulse buy at Costco. The jar of pickled pineapple we sampled this weekend was amazing, so it looks like I’ll be making more of that. I think it will be even better if we can let it sit in the cupboard for a few months.
As I was waiting for the last batch of jars to come out of the canner, I found a tiller on craigslist that was priced to move fast. We’d been talking with Zoe about one a few weeks back, and had decided to look for one we could share. I’ve been antsy about getting the garden finished and I have plans for some new beds. Not wanting to lose my chance, Renée and I jumped in the truck and drove down to Elma to pick up the tiller. It’s nice and sturdy and should meet our needs for quite a few years.
On Saturday we had plans to attend the Seattle Tilth plant sale to get a few veggie and herb starts to fill in the gaps in my garden plan. We met my friend Laura there to drop off some tomato starts and one of our extra Ameracauna roosters (now named Steve). Since we were already making the trip, we decided to take the tiller up to Zoe’s for her approval and to make sure it was in good running order. We hauled compost and gave the tiller a test run, finally preparing a bed for the veggie garden I have planned for her. I made it home tired but happy with the progress we made this weekend.
