Maple Grove Farm

Filling The Pantry

Canning season is picking up and we are beginning to refill the pantry.  We did some cherries last night to bring our total to 24 jars.  We have bought some and my DH has gleaned some.  He will try to pick some more today and I found someone online who is trying to get rid of some for a good price before the weekend.  Yeah!  I love good deals and when I don't have to spend a lot for produce to can. 

My total goal is 83 jars for the year, but I am also trying to add to our reserves so I would need 120 jars total.  I had 21 jars left over from last year, so I had to can approximately 100 jars.  This means I need about 125 pounds of cherries.

I do these calculations for all of our produce and meat needs for our family of nine.  I track them all on a spreadsheet.  I can even tell you how many onions, heads of garlic, and pounds of potatoes I need to feed our family for a year.  Some things I am able to get all of our needs met from the garden and some I have to do without or buy from the store. 

Our canned and frozen packages needs for fruits and vegetables is 1200 per year and I want to get to have two years worth on hand or 2400 packages/jars.  My goal this year will be to get to 50% reserves where last year we were at 30% reserves.  My problem now is where to put all the jars. 

I have a great canning room with built in shelves that was here when we moved in, but I am quickly out-growing it.  This year we will be shuffling things around to move some other food storage to another room where we keep freezers so that we can free more room up for jars.

Apparently I will need some strawberries also in order to meet our year's goals.  We froze many of our own, but it is not quite enough.  Today we will also look to U-pick some strawberries before they are all gone for the year.

Hi!!

06:05, 2009-Jul-28 .. Posted by dana0313

I just came across your blog,and this post is wonderful!!

I too am canning like crazy and hope to stock what we will use this year plus enough to have in reserve for next. Right now I have canned 61 qts of green beans with 35 qts leftover from last year so I am sitting at 96qts, I have calculated that we use approx 1 qts a week so I have enough for this year as well as almost enough for next year. We are a family of 4 but I am also expecting a baby this winter and hope to can up some hm beef veg soup, chili, chicken soup etc so that my hubby or anyone who comes over to visit/help will be able just to open a couple qts of soup/stew/chili and reheat it for us.

I admire your determination and your record keeping. I have never kept a record but have just kept it in my head so to speak but keeping a record is a very good idea!!

Many blessings to you, I hope your canning adventure is a successful one!!
Dana