Happy Lamas (Harvest Festival) everyone!

This weekend brought some serious harvest bounty from farms here in our blessed Valley.  Ella and I managed to drive an hour out to Benson Place in Heath to pick up our wild blueberries, and on the way we stopped at the Greenfield Farmer’s Market.  We got ripe peaches, the first apples of the year, and a box of heirloom tomatoes for canning from our friends at The Kitchen Garden.  Because even though in about a week we’re going to have tomatoes pouring in from our garden (those ones I slow roasted last week were from our fabulous neighbors Birch Moon Herbals), and getting them meant that I was going to have to attempt canning them by myself with a three year old, I could not resist.

Seriously.  When you live in New England, and the growing season is brief but glorious, you don’t walk past ripe peaches and tomatoes.  Nope, you put that toddler onto one hip and the box of tomatoes on the other, and you get it done!  After we got our blueberries and drove home (without either of us freaking out), we fed the animals, had dinner, and when I started cutting up the tomatoes, Ella asked for her knife and joined in.  My favorite lazy lady method is this: take out the stem, cut them into big chunks.  No skinning or seeding – that’s all good fiber!  We got our our jars, tongs, and ladle boiling, got our lids ready, and then I sat down and squeezed lemons while Ella splashed in her bath.

I was planning to do the actual canning after she went to sleep, but she wasn’t sleepy, so we came down together and got the tomatoes boiling while she spooned a teaspoon of salt into each jar and I spooned in two teaspoons of lemon juice.  (No photographic evidence here, sorry, too busy trying not to burn anyone or contaminate the canning!)  Once the tomatoes were boiling, I ladled them into the jars, sealed them, put them into the water bath, and brought that up to a boil.  We did crack one jar somehow, and tragically lost a whole quart of tomatoes into the water bath – ack!  Still, I count this a major success – canning solo with a toddler and no tears!  Clearly a miraculous event.

Once the water began to boil, we set a 15 minute timer and sat down to read Catch Me and Kiss Me and Say it Again (a favorite of ours).  Timer beeped, jars came out, little one went to sleep, and Mama cleaned up.

Here’s hoping you had a weekend filled with all the small miracles in your own blessed place, whatever they may be.