Selfsufficientish.com

Millions of peaches, peaches for me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvcohzJvviQ

These peaches are brilliant! Picked ripe off the trees, they're so soft, juicy and sweet
I'v been washing, stoning and bagging them up for the freezer.

Also have an abundance of sweet plums which we can't sell. They only make 20 denars a kilo ( about 25p ) so its not worth selling them. But i'v been making yummy plum jam with them and stoning and freezing them too.

And we have some early pears which are massive and we're able to sell them at 45 denars a kilo ( about 55p ). I'v been preserving some of the pears in jars. Peeled, quartered, packed into sterile jars with 1 tbsp sugar and topped up with boiling water then water bathed for 15 min on a roaring boil.

Also made sun dried cherry tomatoes with garlic and thyme preserved in oil. When i open them the oil will be all infused and should be grate to cook with.

Plus i'v been making and bottling tomatoes sauces with different combinations of veg as they come into season.

And we've just started harvesting the beans, which there are loads of! So im having to shell them which is quite therapeutic work

My husband is getting exhausted, every day there's more to harvest, plus having to water everything by systematically moving the sprinklers around everything. And he is cycling there and back everyday which is a 12km round trip! Keeps him fit that's for sure! But look at all the stuff we've got! Its such a good feeling! Hope it lasts us through the winter, fingers crossed!

Have you thought about making and selling chutneys or jams to sell Demi. If you can only get pence for the raw product then processing like this might make the difference. HFW called it "value added" or something like. he did it with his tomatoes, which sold for virtually nothing but made a decent return when made into ketchup.

Peaches come in a can..

.. don't they? ;)

Have you done your pears like that before Demi? I did some pears a few years ago and they went a bit off coloured in the jars so next time I added a few elderberries, they went a lovely colour then, but I think maybe I should have added some lemon juice to make the liquid a bit more acidic. I have bottled stuff for years, tomatoes, plums etc and I have been reading about botulism in bottled stuff. I have added balsamic vinegar now to my passata and sundried tomatoes, the sundried toms I did with garlic, I soaked the garlic in a little vinegar too and have been adding a little salt to the stuff. Maybe I am being a bit paranoid but you do have to be careful not to poison anyone

Yes i know all about botulism. I'v had many discutions with people here about it as they bottle most seasonal veg along with tomatoes, and all the fruit in diffrent concentrations of sugar water. Nobody is worried about botulism here. The jars are all throroughly cleaned and steralized, the vag are all together cooked first with tomatoes, then bottled and water bathed on a roaring boil for a certain time. The jars are then stored somwhere cool and dark over for over the winter, usually in a basement where temperatures in the winter are just above freezing so its like a fridge. The tomatoes in the veg provide the acidity, but i was concidering adding a little balsamic vinigar or lemmon juice to increace the acidity.
My pears have gone a slightly pink colour and i agree lemmon juice will probably help that, so im going to add it to the next batch. I haddnt done it before but my mother in law showed me what to do. I'v noticed her pears are the same colour as mine so that must be normal.

I think the thing with botulism is it's such a rare occurance, as long as you are scruptulously clean about everything, and throrghly cook all veg before bottling, pouring the boiling hot veg into boiling hot sterile jars, and store correctly somewhere cold and dark, and discard any jars with a borken seal or that look or smell funny it should be fine. I'm more worried about being hit by a car crossing the road than i am about my jars.

The fruit is supposed to have anough natural acidity in it making it safe to water bath, but adding extra lemmon juice and sugar helps too.

Iv been eating these jars of fruit and veg for years, and all my family here and everyone iv talked to have never heard of anyone getting botulism from them. I know its anecdotal information, but they have been bottling like this for countless generations, i trust they know what they're doing.

Green Aura wrote:Have you thought about making and selling chutneys or jams to sell Demi. If you can only get pence for the raw product then processing like this might make the difference. HFW called it "value added" or something like. he did it with his tomatoes, which sold for virtually nothing but made a decent return when made into ketchup.

I have concidered making them into something to sell, but i want to keep them for us. We sell everything we can ( all the best looking fruit ) and im preserving the rest for us. Its food that we wont have to buy for the next year, and seeing as we dont have any other income we need to try to produce as much of our own food as possible so we dont end up having to buy it, especially over winter when the prices all go up. But we're going to have to invest in another chest freezer, this one's nearly full and they're still lots of more things to harvest! which is another reason for bottling the veg so they dont take up room in the freezer.