Canning: Peaches, Salsa, Jam, Soups and Chicken

 I took this picture for my friend's grandma.  She donated 150 canning jars (in her basement gathering dust) to my canning project. So sweet of her! These are all her jars. Hubby is putting together new racks of shelves for me.  All the others are getting full. Current total for the year is 318 jars.  Only about 180 to go.  That will be mostly apple sauce and more soups with garden produce. I want to try canning cubed sweet potatoes (still to be harvested) and some winter squash soups. Then we have our turkey harvest day in November. We will harvest the last of our extra roosters etc that day as well. Plus, I want to can the next batch of rabbits that I harvest.

I started pressure canning when we butchered our meat chickens. We butchered 23 birds (one was a guinea fowl that was bothering Miss L).  I took 12 chickens and packaged up the 24 drum sticks and 24 breasts in the freezer. Then I put the rest of the carcasses in big pots to boil slowly for a couple hours.  That made 7 quarts of chicken and about 13 quarts of broth. Those jars on the top row are the broth and 7 jars of meat (plus some minestrone that I made with the chicken broth and veggies from our garden).  Five of the other broilers went to the friend that I borrowed the plucker from and the other 6 went into the freezer as whole broilers. 

 Our elderberry bushes did amazingly well for their first year of bearing. When I planted them last year they were just 12 inch twigs. We harvested 18 cups for ourselves and gave a bunch to our neighbors and other friends. I made peach elderberry spread with 6 cups and the rest are waiting in the freezer to be made into syrup for winter time ailments. They are definitely a messy crop though. We learned quickly that as much of their prep as possible should be done outside. 

We made lots of tomato and tomatillo salsa, both are recipes from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.

 We harvested about 60 lbs. of tomatillos thus far, with many more growing.  My kids are good at helping with the husking. In addition to salsa, we canned tomatillo chicken soup and tomatillo chili.

 I put all the jars of canned peaches, tomato sauce, and salsa in boxes on the big shelves. We still have about 10 jars of salsa left from last year, but I think that will work out perfectly because the new batches need time to ripen on the shelf before they will be really good.