Know Your Farmers, Know Your Food

There are so many reasons to can/ preserve your own food these days. We are doing tomatoes today as well as planting many winter crops.. cabbage, beets, turnips, collards, kale... the list goes on. Our tomato crop was practically non-existent this season from experimental growing methods, so we bought 25 Lbs. of romas from a local farmer. Our mason jars are reusable and the tomatoes came in no packaging so once we fill/ empty the jars it's time to do it all over again. Next season we are back to starting tomatoes inside in early spring. Transplanting is more labor intensive but from our research here on our small farm, it is worth it.

We are also in the process of filling up the freezer with chicken for the dogs and us. We buy only organic pastured poultry from a family farm down in Socorro, NM. We got about 50 Lbs. in there now and tomorrow we're supposed to get a delivery that just might fill the whole damn thing. (It's only been plugged in for a week, so we are saving energy with having it used to it's fullest potential. When not completely full a freezer will work harder to freeze empty space so we have water jugs in there now.)