Canning mania still in full swing

Sometime between the seventh batch of applesauce and the task of stripping a five-gallon bucket of BB-sized elderberries off their vines last Sunday, I cried “uncle.”

“Enough. I can’t take any more,” I wailed, ready to collapse right there at the kitchen sink where I stood alongside my husband as we plucked the minuscule berries destined for a batch of jelly.

It was a bountiful year for local gardeners, and we’re certainly thankful for the bumper crops of numerous fruits and vegetables. But as I’ve heard many other fellow gardeners mutter, enough is enough. We’re ready to be done with preserving all this produce.

The canning started months ago as we began pickling masses of cucumbers and we’re still going as the last bastions of tomatoes sprawled out on the floor of the extra bedroom to ripen.

And it’s not just the canning that’s time-consuming: We’ve frozen an entire freezer full of vegetables.

I have to admit I’m to blame for some of the workload. As we picked a friend’s apple trees one glorious fall evening last week, my husband on more than one occasion asked me: “Don’t you think we’ve picked enough?” I wanted to keep going. I could give some to friends and co-workers, I told him. Wouldn’t want them to go to waste.

By the time we finished we had loaded up nearly 300 pounds of nearly flawless McIntoshes.

The same thing happened with our heavily laden plum tree. He said let’s leave the rest for the birds; I said let’s keep picking. Now I’m paying the price.

I can’t take all the blame for the workload, though. Hubby promised to scale back planting at our second garden, the “Hintze Annex,” but it was still too much. Instead of winding up with six five-gallon buckets of peppers like we did last year, this growing season produced a mere three buckets full. Yep, that’s a lot of peppers and a lot of salsa.

Thank goodness my husband has the canning stamina of an Olympic champion. Raised in a hard-working family of German descent that deemed canning a sport, he’s energized by the prospect of preserving mountains of produce. We actually ran out of canning jars last weekend, and I need to note we own a lot of jars — hundreds of them.

No problem. He toted home four cases of new jars for this weekend’s canning frenzy.

So here we go again. Up next is more salsa, pear butter, tomato sauce and who knows what else.

Last week when I wearily asked my better half if we had the wherewithal do tackle yet another round of slicing and dicing, I already knew the answer.

“Honey,” he said with a wink. “I’m just getting started.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at [email protected].