Since I am the person who has the first contact with anyone coming to the station there was a possibility that I was exposed to the virus. So I was sent home and instructed to contact my Primary Healthcare Provider. Blah Blah Blah...I got the nasal swab and was then told to quarantine for 14 days (from day of contact). I am now on day 14 of my quarantine and will be going back to work tomorrow (July 21). I have yet to receive my results, but have no symptoms and feel fine.
After spending several days waiting for Quest Diagnostics to get my results sent to the doc I have been working on a couple of things around our farm. It was time to learn how to use my brand spankin' new All American Pressure Canner. I've only had it since May, but I have been a little apprehensive about figuring out how to use it and put it off.
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| I've been using the Turkey Fryer stove thing |
Well, having to quarantine and opting to just have the time off and not work remotely gave me a little bit of freedom. Of course, now I decide to jump into this toward the end of my isolating period. That's how I roll people.
On Thursday of last week I decided it was time to at least figure out how to prep the monster and try out a test run. I had to do that anyway. After watching a couple of YouTube videos I got my supplies and had Tom show me how to use the Turkey fryer stove. Easy-Peasy.
My first attempt was to make sure that I was actually placing the lid on correctly and making sure that it was properly sealed. It wasn't and there was water sputtering out at different parts of the canner. So, my thought was that I probably didn't tighten the wing-nuts enough. Sure enough by batch number three and tightening each time, that was the problem. Lesson learned - just keep twisting until they can't move anymore!
Saturday afternoon I went ahead and did a batch of broth. I took several containers from the stand freezer to process and this is what we ended up with -
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| Two Chicken, Two Pork and one with a mix of both |
So, these turned out and all of them were bubbling like crazy when I took them out of the canner. The next morning I ran another batch of four jars and they also turned out well! Today In an effort to clear out the freezer even more I canned my Salsa Verde from last October.
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| Broth & Salsa Verde |
I think I got this canning thing down. All I need to know is how many pounds of pressure to do and the length of time to process. It's really not as scary as I thought it would be.
We have been joking about me canning everything. Well, I'm not going to do that, but I will can a lot of stuff! I'm still hopeful that I will have plenty of tomatoes to make sauce. If I'm lucky I'll have some pumpkins to process and instead of roasting, pureeing and throwing into the freezer I'll can cubes of pumpkin! Depending on how our potato harvest goes I'll can that too!
My impressions of pressure canning now that I have figured it out is that it's a good thing and a lot of fun! What I like is that we have freed up a bunch of space in the stand freezer and the refrigerator freezer. We'll be harvesting more meat chickens in a few months so I'll need more space to store the 26 birds that we have in the brooder. Since we switched to a different type of meat bird, one that will grow larger, we'll need the extra space to store them.
What needs to change. As pictured above, I have one choice to use my canner. Since my stove top is smooth, it was not recommended to use my canner on. Okay, Plan B....hmmm. I was concerned that I would either have to return the canner OR get a separate single burner type thing. There was no way that I would be returning it! After some research and thinking I remembered that we have that turkey fryer which we found on craigslist and bought it specifically for scalding our meat chickens on harvest day. SCORE!! The fryer unit was either on the floor in the garage or Tom got it down for me and I hoped really big that the canner would fit in the ring. Now that I have had a chance to try the canner out on the turkey fryer stove I decided that a knob with Lo-Med-Hi would be nice. None of this guessing stuff with turning the valve incrementally until I reached the proper heat level. The first real canning session I ended up turning it off. I lit that back up so fast! Anway, MORE research brought me to this:
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| Camp Chef Explorer (photo credit CampChef.com) |
Then I decided that I needed to see if there were any video reviews on YouTube. What kind of question is that? Of course there's a video review! When I typed in Camp Chef Explorer Review this video popped up.
So this will be our next BIG purchase for the farm. Most of the purchases we make are to add to the farm somehow anything from equipment like the Troy Bilt rototiller to livestock/chicks and everything in between. This isn't a huge purchase, but it will be a good one!
With the food system as it is, kinda broken, this canning thing will be a regular occurrence in our home. We can buy things like dry beans in bulk, meat on sale and oooh...the boxes of fresh produce at Wilco! Since my bean plants have been attacked by something, probably a bunny, I'll have to buy beans to put-up. I'm not a fan of canned beans, but my other half is. Doing things to keep him happy is always a good thing. Then there are the two giant pear trees - another thing I'm not a fan of :( I'll have to try canning a fair amount of pears this year. Maybe this will be the year that I gain an appreciation for pears. We'll see...
Here's to another canning session coming this weekend!
Farm Life Best Life!!
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