Buckets and cans

Now that the garden is cranking out the veggies we have more than we can possibly eat.  Not enough to set up a stand on the corner of the highway, but definitely more than a family of four can use in a couple days.   Luci has been busy in the kitchen putting everything in jars.  So far the stock of pickles is filling up with bread and butter pickles, green tomato dills, whole garlic dills, dill hamburger slices and pickled peppers there is salsa, tomato sauce and blackberry jelly and strawberry jam. We also picked plums and squeezed out a gallon or so of bright hot pink plum juice that's in  freezer until were ready.  These pickles got put up tonight and in the morning we sauce the tomatoes and use half for salsa half for pasta sauce. 

We use a lot of pasta sauce and salsa so if nothing else this will mean a whole bunch of jars will no longer end up in land fills. I tried to keep all the jars we buy when we are done so I could recycle them, but there is no where to take them with in an hour of us so I ended up pitching them out. I have wonder if it uses less resources to can at home or to have them centrally mass produced. For instance if everyone made pickles at home the vinegar has to travel to each house in small containers rather to one location in a huge container.  The cost of making it ourselves is definetly effective on the second round.  If you add in the cost of the jars, you are probably just barely under what it would cost to buy things like pickles at the store, but the second time around when you already have the jars you begin to save some money.