We recently decided to split a CSA with our awesome neighbors who live down the street, so now every other Thursday, a box of organic vegetables is delivered to our doorstep from Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a farm in East Austin.
I think we’ve made use of all the vegetables we’ve received with the exception of the kohlrabi we got with our first delivery. I had never even heard of kohlrabi before it arrived in our box, and I had no idea what to do with it, but luckily it’s out of season now, and big beautiful red tomatoes are in season. I am very happy about this fact.
When I saw that JBG was having a bulk tomato sale, I ordered 20 pounds. My dad and my brother are pretty successful canners of jellies and salsa, so I decided to give canning a whirl with our tomato bounty. This Saturday we picked them up from our neighborhood farmers market.
We also picked up some eggs from RRR Farm’s stand. Don’t you love the logo?
After we left the farmers market, we bought a 36 quart pot with a drain basket from Academy Sports, and we bought some lemon juice, which you add to the jars to eliminate the growth of bacteria. Some friends had donated some quart-sized mason jars to us, so we were ready to go.
We used these instructions for our hot water bath canning method. The most valuable lessons we learned from our first adventure in canning are these: do not fill the jars all the way to the top (leave about ¼ inch of space between the top of the tomatoes and the lid) and don’t loosen the rings until the jars are quite cool. About half of our jars didn’t seal the first time around because we had filled them too full, so we removed some of the liquid, and boiled them a second time. Once we had all of the necessary materials, the process probably took about three hours. Twenty pounds of tomatoes yielded eight quart jars.
I can’t wait to make homemade pizza and spaghetti sauce! I’ll report back when we’ve cracked open the first jar.
– Courtney
Photographs by Ken Simpson of Photo 552