What’s that?  Coronavirus possibly causing food shortages, you say?  Well, we have a plan for that…

My girlfriend and I have begun a canning (jarring) contest (mostly for additional motivation because this is a marathon, not a sprint).  The challenge is to fill 150 canning jars of various sizes with food produced on-farm, U-picked, or gleaned from the barrow ditch before winter.  She actually has 250 jars and I now have about 200 jars, but we thought we’d set the bar a little lower.  That way, when one of us does manage to get up over 200 jars, they’ll get even MORE bragging rights! #TheGreatCanningContest

We’ve set other goals that would yield bragging rights such as a) first to can anything (I think I just won that), b) whoever cans the most tomatoes (i.e., can include salsa, sauce, tomatoes with peppers, enchilada sauce, etc.), c) best organization of canned/jarred food (we both are struggling with the best place to store all of these filled jars, ever-hunting for dark and cool locations), d) whoever cans 150 jars first, and e) most creative food canned!

First off (pictured) is Dilled Asparagus Pickles (page 179) from the book Blue Ribbon Canning by Linda J. Amendt.

We have a “historical” stand of asparagus in our garden patch, which, we were told, was planted years ago by a previous owner.  It’s quite infamous and we wonder how many people actually know about it.  It’s quite a productive patch and pickling the asparagus is one way to keep up with it.  Asparagus is also good in a fricassee, roasted or seared in a cast iron skillet with garlic (or simply salt/pepper), or in a frittata!

The “word on the street” by anyone around this farm in the Spring is “you’ll pee green and have eggs coming out your ears” if you stick around for any length of time.