It's an almost lost art. My folks preserved garden foods the entire time we were growing up. Us kids always helped picking the veggies and washing them. Many years ago after buying some property, I decided to do the same and started with a garden. Let me tell you the gardening is the easy part. I forgot how timely the harvest happens. Produce seems to come in all at once and preparation for this is easily underestimated. The first year, I remember having to give away to the neighbors surpluses of cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, kohlrabi, and bell peppers. The worst of all was spinach and chard. You eat it right away or it goes bad. The second year I geared up and bought more Kerr jars and a larger pot for canning. Even then I underestimated the amount of harvest coming in all at once along with the amount of processing equipment I had. On top of this, I was doing it all by myself.

The point I'm making here is that harvesting veggies for canning and freezing is an all-hands-on-deck operation. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth learning this knowledge and reaping its rewards. To this day, I still don't know how my mom did all of this. She accomplished this incredible feat year after year. We ate 'organic' well before the word was ever associated with foods. We all underestimated the grit and energy she had. Jesus tell mom I wish I could tell her this now. RIP.