Potatoes are in!

I can finally give an update to my potato post from May!  Well folks, we have potatoes.  I can actually say that the potato sacks that I experimented with this year did work and I got more potatoes than I normally get when I plant them out in the garden.  Now I will sat that the overall output wasn't great, but I know this was due to the horrible drought.  I mean, I can only water so much!!

The potato plants had fallen over and started to dry up.  It was time to unearth any potatoes in the bags.

Purple, red, yellow, and white...a nice little potato harvest.

Some nice white potatoes!!

I'll probably use these bags again next year.  I'm just going to hold my breath and hope we get more rain!  

Time to can....

I spent all day yesterday canning tomato sauce from the abundance of heirloom tomatoes that we've had  this year.  Despite the drought and thanks to sprinkler irrigation, we've had a nice bumper crop of tomatoes.  I had started a lot of canning tomatoes from seed this year so I would have plenty to can.  I'll have more paste tomatoes to can yet too as they ripen up.  If there is one item our family uses through the cold months it's tomatoes.  I've already gotten green beans in the freezer and I hope to have a few more items to get stocked up for the upcoming winter.  I've been feeling the pressure to save as much food as possible this year since the current rumblings are saying that food prices are going to be out of the 'Verse next year due to the drought we've had this year.  If you are in a position to save food for yourself and your family, I would do it.  You don't have to go through the effort of canning if you don't want to.  So many things freeze so very well.  I actually prefer to freeze sweet corn over canning it as I think the flavor and texture is so much better! In all seriousness though, save what you can to ease your financial burden in the relatively near future.  I wish we were ready to get the cow we're wanting to get simply because I know the price of GOOD milk is going to be crazy.  With two little children and a third on the way we go through unreal amounts of milk in this house!  We actually sat down and did the math...it would be cheaper in the long run for us to buy the cow, her feed, and hay than to buy milk for the year!  Crazy.  Anyways!  Here are the pictures from yesterdays marathon canning.  And on a final note...canning all day in a hot kitchen when you're 35 weeks pregnant is NOT fun!!

Lovely Italian heirlooms for canning.  This basin weighed about 30 pounds just to give you an idea.   There was more where that came from too!

Another basin full of other pretty tomatoes.   Some of these got thrown in the canning pot, but many were saved for other tasty applications. 

One 11 quart stockpot full of tomatoes ready to be cooked down before going through the mill to remove the seeds and the skins.  I had to repeat this process MANY times.

The finished project fresh out of the canner.  This tomato sauce will come in very handy on many cold winter evenings  as a good base for a nice hot pot of soup.  It's a lot of work, but it's worth it in my eyes.