The blueberries are done

Ever since we planted the blueberry bushes here in our new home, they've been growing like mad.

Their production is increasing, too. The first year, I harvested one pound of berries – not surprising, since the bushes were just ramping up. Last year, they produced sixteen pounds.

This was on the order of what our bushes in our last home produced every summer, so to be honest I would have been perfectly satisfied with that.

But this year, the bushes produced and produced and produced. I picked and picked and picked. I filled gallon bags with fruit and popped them in the chest freezer, and I kinda lost count of how much I had. All I knew was it was a lot.

Finally I got tired of having to burrow past endless bags of blueberries in the freezer whenever I needed something, so I knew it was time to weigh the summer's bounty and get it canned up. I pulled all the bags out of the freezer and laid them on the table.

Can you see why these bags were dominating the freezer space?

One by one, I started weighing the bags, and tallying the results.

The total: 57.25 lbs!!!

Holy toledo, I did NOT expect the bushes to be this fruitful.

The trouble is, we don't need nearly sixty pounds of blueberries. I still have some canned up from last year. The solution, of course, was to give most of them away. I gave ten pounds of frozen berries to the UPS driver, a very sweet man, who said his wife canned and would be grateful for the fruit. (Later, I gave him another ten pounds.)

I planned to can up the rest and distribute a good portion to church members.

Canning gave me an excuse to use my lovely new water-bath canners I got for my birthday last year.

I canned everything using a "very light" syrup, the recipe of which can be found in this canning reference book.

While the syrup heated up...

...I washed fourteen quart jars, the maximum the two canners could handle.

The berries had been defrosting overnight. I cold-packed the defrosted fruit into quart jars.

Adding the syrup.

Wiping the rims (and checking for nicks).

Filling the canners with water. I used regular disposable lids for these berries instead of Tattlers, since I was giving away the majority of the canned blueberries and didn't want to lose any Tattler lids.

For raw packs in quarts at our elevation, I needed to process the jars for 25 minutes at a rolling boil.

I brought the water up to a rolling boil and began timing the berries. Suddenly I heard a bang. Sure enough, the bottom broke off one of the jars, resulting in a deluge of loose blueberries and a broken jar floating at the top of the pot.

I fished out the broken jar and let the rest of the jars process.

The culprit, I believe, is the racks that came with the pots didn't have enough clearance from the bottom. (During canning, jars should never be in direct contact with the pot's bottom.)

So I put a rack at the bottom. Duh, I should have done that first.

Typical canning chaos in the kitchen.

When all was said and done, I canned up 36 quarts of blueberries (including the one that broke), plus gave away another 20 lbs. of frozen berries to the UPS fellow.

Now 36 quarts of blueberries – on top of what I haven't yet used up from last year – is way more than we need, so we brought 24 of those quarts to church to hand out. (By the time I managed to snap a photo, several quarts had already been claimed.) The only request – augmented by a piece of tape on each quart – was to return the jars to me when the contents are finished. (What can I say, I'm territorial about my canning jars.) Needless to say, every last jar disappeared.

Interestingly, though, several older church members have offered me some of their surplus canning jars they no longer need, so it's turned into a win-win situation.

Incidentally, a reader asked, "How do you make pie filling from your canned blueberries?" To make a blueberry pie, I drain the berries, add sugar to taste, and about half a cup of flour, mix everything, and pour it into a pie crust. Sometimes I'll add a pat or two of butter over the top of the berries before putting the pie top on.

So that's our blueberry harvest for the year. With nearly sixty pounds harvested, that's about three-and-half times what we harvested the year before. I wonder what will happen next year?

Canning frenzy

The trouble with canning, I've found, is once I start, it's hard to stop.

It began with peas. While cleaning out and inventorying our chest freezer, I came across two gallons of peas from the garden in our last place. At the time I harvested them, we were selling the house. It was a busy summer and I didn't have time to can anything, so I put them in the freezer ... and forgot about them.  Those were the first things to get canned.

Then, a couple days later, Don and I were driving through a nearby town when we saw one of those traveling fruit vendors. Instantly we pulled over and purchased two boxes of peaches (which, let the record show, had fewer quantity and higher prices than past purchases; but yowza they were delicious!). We had been trying to chase down this fruit vendor for several weeks, but didn't know his schedule. (Now we have his business card.) From this bounty, I canned up 15 quarts of peaches; the rest we ate fresh. Peaches are – hands down and by a wide margin – my all-time favorite fruit.

Lastly, of course, I canned the blueberries.

I'm also washing and selling some surplus canning jars that didn't sell at the yard sale. Most of these are half-pint jam and jelly jars, which I simply don't use.

Have I mentioned how much I love fall? Canning and autumn are forever entwined in my mind.

Hmm .... what can I can up next? Hopefully by this time next year, our garden will be up and running, and I'll have lots more ways to celebrate fall.

Berry berry good

At last, all the blueberries have been harvested! What a contrast to last year's crop.

I can't complain about last year, though. Really, it was the bushes' first time putting out flowers and fruit, and it always takes blueberries a bit of time to rev up production.

But this year – wow. Just wow.

Now that the harvest is finished, I had a chance to weigh what we got (basically, four gallons).

On the left is the little quart bag with last year's harvest, dwarfed by this year's crop.

Last year: one pound.

After weighing and tallying each bag of this year's crop...

...the total came to sixteen pounds! Literally sixteen times what we got last year!

Of course, next I did what any passionate canner would do: I canned them up, combining both last year's and this year's berries.

I washed jars and made a thin syrup.

Mid-production.

Final tally: Fifteen quarts.

I anticipate lots of blueberry pies this winter. Berry berry good.

The taste of summer

Yesterday I rummaged around in our chest freezer to find something, which meant I had to push aside bags and bags and BAGS of blueberries I'd picked last July.

I kept meaning to can the berries but hadn't gotten around to it. Well, the time had come. I was tired of digging around them.

First step: pull out all the bags and let the berries defrost.

I wasn't sure how many pints jars the berries would fill, so I started off with a dozen. Then two dozen. Final count, thirty (and a half). (The jar in front is a half-pint jar.)

They look like little soldiers all lined up, don't they?

Making the syrup.

Filling the jars with syrup.

Scalding the lids and rings.

Processing in a water bath. Took two bouts with two kettles each to get them all done.

A long over-due job. Now we have more room in the freezer.

Canning blueberries

This summer I picked 18.5 lbs of blueberries from our bushes.

As they came ripe, I picked and froze them until the harvest was complete. Now it was time to haul all the bags out of the freezer and can them.

I wasn't sure how many pints 18.5 lbs of blueberries would fill, so I just started filling jars.

I also made a medium syrup.

Blueberries are some of the few fruits where a cold pack is recommended over a hot pack. I did not, however, blanch them.

I kept filling jars and kept filling jars until I ended up with 31 pints.

Then I filled the jars with syrup.

As I wiped the rims with a damp cloth...

...I found one jar with a nick, so I had to pour it into an unchipped jar.

Getting the lids ready.

Between my two largest pots, I could fit 17 pints at a time.

Blueberries (in pints) only need to process for 15 minutes at a rolling boil, so hammering through two sets didn't take long.

Even after a quarter-century of canning, I still find filled jars just -- beautiful.