Severe Drought Conditions: Taking Stock of the Canning Pantry

They have announced that our part of Michigan is now in a severe drought. So the big garden is mostly done. Tomatoes won't bloom, cucumbers dry on the vine, and the leaves wither on the green beans every day, no matter how much I water.  We manage to harvest enough to have a good meal and that's basically it. Believe me, I'm thankful for that!  

Even though it looks like we may get rain today so far it's just clouds. Oh yeah, there is the heat.  Did I mention heat?  Yesterday the heat index was 105!   Michigan is hot folks!  

Not everything is bad. You see I have something I'm even thankful for this gardening year.  We had a wonderful gardening year last year.  It was perfect and I canned to my hearts content.

It was one of those years where I was actually beginning to worry about how many canning jars I had.  I have heard people say that you really need to work hard those years because you never know what the next year may bring!  That's so true and I'm glad I did.

So this morning I decided just to see how many canned goods we have left and clean the shelves:

My canning jar pantry is just a metal shelf that I made a little pretty with extra trim I had on hand. Most of the time I just get a jar and go back to cooking. It's a grab and run sort of thing.  

This morning though I got busy cleaned, organized everything, and counted. Having a taste of summer in the winter is just hard to beat. I wanted to know just how much summer we could remember this winter!    


Here is a list of what we have left from last year:


Green beans         35 jars

Tomatoes                6 qts

Salsa                        7 pts.

Picked beets            3 pints

Mustard Greens       2 quarts

Strawberry jam        23 pints

Apple butter              5 pints

Cabbage                    9 Pints and quarts 

Shuck Beans              1 mess (dinner)

I also have sauerkraut left in my daughter's basement.   I'll be taking stock of that first of next week.

So it's not all bad!   We are blessed indeed!  

You can read here about how well our garden produced in 2015!  







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