I Say To-may-to, You Say To-mah-to

Whew.  Let's take a break from all the heavy stuff, and talk about some homesteading, shall we??  :)  There ya go... settle back in your chair, unfurrow your brow, exhale, and let's talk tomato canning first!  :)

For the last couple of years, we haven't had a large harvest of tomatoes...  I mean, our plants were HUGE, and very lush, but the fruit was meager.  This year, our plants looked really sad and spindly and we got a lot more tomatoes...go figure.  Maybe it's because all of the plant's energy went into fruit production, as opposed to, leaf production.

We have picked tomatoes all summer in little spurts...mostly for tomato sandwiches--which, in my opinion, is summer's crowning achievement.  :)  A couple of weeks ago, it came to my attention that there were enough tomatoes to do some canning! yes!

Shiny, rain washed tomatoes

 My absolute favorite part of tomato canning is sliding the skin off.. :)  you dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute or so, and then immediately drop them in cold water...  this makes the skin burst and slip right off...

the other nice thing about canning tomatoes is that they only need a boiling water bath to process ...as opposed to a presser cooker....
Since picking these tomatoes, we've picked and canned about two more rounds..

the first harvest finally in cans and waiting to hear the seal go, "Pop!"