The dog barking at a coyote that must have been at least two miles away woke me up this morning a tad before my usual rising time. I could have snuggled closer to Darrell and dozed off again for a while but then a doe started to climb up the wooden steps of the deck to get in a better position to reach more tasty leaves on the grape vine just outside out bedroom door. So after yelling at the dog to be quiet and scaring the deer momentarily off I decided to just get up and have my first cuppa of the day and write my Sunday blog. It was a busy day yesterday thus I thought it would have been quite nice to have slept in until around 5:30 or maybe even six o’clock this morning but that was not to be.
Yesterday, promptly at five o’clock and before the light of dawn was peeking over the easterly horizon; I was down at the butcher shop preparing forty-five pounds of elk customer’s jerky to pop in the smoke house. But that was just a start to what the day had in store. After morning chores were completed Darrell and I headed to the garden as his crop of corn this year is wonderful and a lot prime for harvesting. It was to be a corn-canning day. Between us we picked good firm ears left and right until a big tub was brimming over as well as a bucket or two. All was loaded on the four-wheeler trailer and trundled to the house. Since the wind was blowing like mad we sat outside beside the trailer with the wind to our backs as the task of removing husk and silk from each ear was performed. Pretty soon two coolers were overflowing with lovely shiny ears of corn.
My friend Val arrived just in time for the tedious and often messy task of removing the kernels from the cobs. She had brought along a dozen of her own canning jars and together we were going to, as Darrell had put it the day before, “Have a corn canning Bee!” Between getting ready to start the corn kernel-removing chore I dashed to the smokehouse to tend the jerky and get more smoke on the go, then back to the house to get cracking with the corn. Val and I sat on the side deck, each bearing a sharp knife, a pan in which to collect the kernels and big pots handy in which to deposit said kernels when they built up in our pans. This was Val’s first go at doing such a load of corn and she was a trooper! Pretty soon the coolers were empty of cobs, pots were brimming with yellow gold and it was time to move inside and get cracking filling our pint jars.
My pressure canners are big things that always remind me of bristly sea mines or as I often say, atomic bombs! Now pressure canners are a homesteader’s best friend when it comes to putting up food, but there is always something rather intimidating about them too! My “old faithful” All American Canner that I have had since 1980 will hold sixteen pint jars or eight quart jars. A few years ago, we bought an additional canner, made by the same company as my old faithful, but this one holds sixteen pints or sixteen quarts so it is quite a bit larger! With both on the go at the same time, a handy thirty-two pints can be processed at once. I would much rather have two canners on the go but of course, being the frugal person I am it only took Darrell around fifteen years to convince me to buy the second canner. I had been waffling for ages about getting another one as I did not want to pay the prices they asked for them, but my goodness it was worth it as the time saved using two at one go is priceless! Since corn must be processed at ten pounds of pressure for fifty-five minutes and to me this denotes the really tedious time in canning when one has to sit and keep an eye on the canner pressure gauges for that processing time, doubling up your yield just makes good sense.
Val jumped right in and started filling the jars and carefully wiping the rims clean of any bits of corn that would interfere with a good seal. The canners were heating up and in pretty good time we had thirty-two pint jars filled with golden corn kernels, topped off with hot water, lids and bands on and all placed in the canners. Pressure soon rose to the requisite ten pounds so a cup of tea and a chat were in order while the processing time passed. Intermittently I would dash down to the smokers to check on the jerky, turning the pieces over and keeping the smoking process on the go. A definite multi-tasking day! The jerky needs careful tending too.
The reward always comes when processing time is over and the canners have been allowed to slowly drop pressure. You remove the lid and start taking out the still bubbling jars full of your gardens harvest bounty. They sit on towels laid out on our wood cook stove top where they would be allowed to settle and cool, the lids giving that satisfying “pop!” confirming the seal is complete. What a sight to see forty-eight jars nicely lined up, even better to see them on your pantry shelf! Canning season, what is next? Friend Debbie just let me know she will have a passel of pickling cucumbers for me on Wednesday, hmmm… dill pickles are on the horizon I see plus if Mother Nature does not hit us with an early frost we will have a bounty of tomatoes to put up as well.
Canning season is here, work for sure but what a wonderful feeling it is in the middle of winter to go into the pantry and take out a jar of golden corn, popping the top and tasting the goodness fresh from your summer garden. Yes, the reward is well worth the effort…