The fruits of our labor. We are deep in the tomato harvest. In fact, we've been picking and eating them for about a month now. It took so long for them to start ripening because of that cold and awful June we had. And then those green tomatoes just sat on the vine day after day, not turning. But finally, they did and now they are coming so fast that we can't eat them all and that means canning!
I've canned tomatoes in the past, but not my own homegrown ones. I'm hoping these come out well. I had to re-learn a few things like the necessity that the glass jar be piping hot already before you put the tomatoes in and put it in the boiling water. We lost a whole jar of tomatoes to that broken-glass lesson. But everything went smoothly afterward and now we have eight quarts of tomatoes put up.
I don't know if our plants have much more in them before the frost comes and the tomato blights catch up to them, but if they do we'll can those too. Of course, once we go apple picking, we're definitely putting up a whole bunch of applesauce this year too. Mmmm.
