All year long we've been enjoying food from last year... and the jars are stacking up. The garden is starting to hit production, and its time to fill-em-up!
This week we really started getting alot of green (and purple and yellow...) beans. With all the helpers, it doesn't take long to get them picked!The purple ones are our favorite - they grow FAST, and are easy to see in the bushes.
After picking in the early morning sun, we put on a movie and start snapping 'em. That goes fast, too.
A good cleaning and they are ready for the bottles.
Here are the bottles, loaded and locked. We like to bottle both snapped beans and also the full-length beans. It is a nice variety, and cuts down alittle on the number of snappings we need to do.
Snapping the beans fits about 8-10 more beans per bottle. Not a big deal.
The next step is loading 7 quart jars into our canner. If you can afford it, get a canner WITHOUT the rubber seal - they are great! Nothing is more disappointing than to wait 40 minutes for presssure to build, and find out that the rubber seal didn't work - arggg!We can the beans for 25 minutes at 10 psi.
Here's the final product. Right now, we have 3 rows of beans (50' long) that are putting out a bushel every 2 days. We get about 15 quarts per picking (each 2 days). They are just getting started!We're hoping to get about 90 quarts canned...
Notice too how the purple beans turn green after canning. Bummer!
