The Canning Project

It's an addiction. I love to can.

Canning is fun! I've been a hobby canner for years. Living in the small city of Grand Junction was a great place to be a hobby canner. #palisadecolorado was a great source for cheap seconds and free fruit (and still is! See 2018 peaches). I would pick a whole tree of fruit and can for a few days in a row. It was almost always for free too!

Until this year, I'd only canned about 10 beets that I grew. I froze some tomato sauce from homegrown tomatoes, but all of my canning projects were from farms and off of my property.

Currently we have three existing fruit trees on the property - pears, apples and plumbs. The plumb tree is very old, and because of the drought made about 25 walnut sized plumbs this year. The apples are very buggy, but they make great juice. The pears are so tasty, and we've mixed them with apples for sauce and leather.

Back to Goals and Vision

One of our ideas is to market our home made canned goods. Under the Colorado Cottage Foods act, we can sell a small selection of canned goods (i.e. all veggies must be pickled, no 'salsa', etc.) We'll see if this comes to fruition. You'll be the first to see our marketing and products. Sorry, under this law, food can only be sold to consumers in Colorado.

It's a goal. I'm in my happy place processing food and standing over a hot water bath. It really is music to my ears when you hear the "pop" of a sealing lid. Then, when the peaches are out of season, or when our little goose wants a sweet snack, popping open a can of out of season fruit or cutting a small piece of fruit leather brings the best joy in the world. Knowing the source of that food will be even more rewarding!

Peaches 2018

On a hot August day, while I was in Grand Junction (Side note: until this week, I've been continuing my work in GJ. I worked at #grandvalleyuu for over seven years. I loved my job. On September 9, 2018, they honored my work, and I couldn't even explain how wonderful this community of people has been for me and my family. I LOVE THEM ALL!), I received an email stating there were two acres of peaches that would rot on the trees of someone didn't come pick them. I didn't pick them all. My goodness, I drive a Honda Civic. There's no way I could fit them in my car! Also, it was 2:30 in the afternoon in the Grand Valley, so it was about 97 degrees. I picked about three trees worth, and gave lots of them away. We put up 28 quarts of peach halves, a whole lot of jam, and about a dozen pints each of habanero peach sauce and jalapeno peach sauce. Yum. Of course we froze a bunch more too. This was about three days of work, three glorious days of work!