August is an odd month (and a busy one). It’s still definitely summer, but you can start to see the first tiny signs of fall. We’ve got hot humid weather in the 90s, but some of the trees are starting to show the first yellow leaves and it’s time to plant the fall garden. It’s also time for some big canning projects. Peaches are available starting in July, but they don’t separate from the pits until August and we got lots of cucumbers and tomatoes too for pickles, salsa and whole tomatoes. That just leaves apple sauce, apple butter, raspberry jam and pears for September (and marmalade for winter).
So far the canning projects have gone well. The salsa in particular worked out really well (yay for the ‘Zesty Salsa’ recipe from Ball!). It’ll be interesting to see how long these last/how fast we eat them. The goal is to eventually keep about a year’s supply so that’s the other half of this experiment. We’ve got about 8 pints of salsa, 18 quarts of tomatoes, 6 quarts of pickles and 9 pints of peaches.
