Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Mother Nature says "Ha!"

I have written in the past about the large family garden we participate in yearly, which generally produces an epic quantity of canned tomato goods, as well as frozen and canned veggies. Some years we have overflowed with the bounty of the earth, to the point that we gave gift baskets of canned goods at Christmas. Other years haven't produced quite as well, but always there was enough.

This year, we were not so lucky. The garden was hit repeated with heavy driving rain off and on,  the plants refused to thrive and in the end there weren't enough tomatoes to serve BLTs for dinner.

So the hard decision was made--to plow everything under, use up all our stores of canned goods, and start over next year.

We have a decent supply of ketchup and pizza sauce, but where this really hurts is on spaghetti night. When it comes to pasta, supply and demand have been closely linked. Two weeks ago we used the last home canned tomato sauce, and for the first time in 4 years I was forced to buy (sigh) commercial tomato sauce.

As I have also mentioned in the past, one does not can tomatoes to  save money, let alone work, but because the sauce tastes so much better when it is free of corn syrup and preservatives.  Buying tomato sauce is hardly an economic hardship, but it is an ascetic one.  Once you make (and taste) your own the store bought stuff in the can never tastes as good. 

We aren't completely out of luck this year though--the hogs are thriving and there will be fresh ham and sausage and bacon and so forth for the families this year. And I do think there is a lesson in all this.  In modern times we often overlook the fact that farming, whether large scale or small, is a risky business.  At the grocery store, the worse that happens is that certain foods become scarce, or more expensive.  We forget that at one time the quantity and quality of harvests were a matter of life or death. So much of the process is out of our control. We only put the seed into the ground, the rest is up to the Earth.

And Mother Nature can say "ha!" at any time.



27 comments:

  1. It's true; we live in times that make it easy to overlook the variables that dictate what goes on to our dinner tables. Such abundance and variety at today's grocery stores puts us out of touch with that reality.

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    1. Not only that, but a whole year of tomato sauce from the grocery store will make next year's harvest all the better.

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  2. I just finished canning 200 pounds of pears harvested from only 2 trees-- the elbow grease is so worth it in terms of flavor. I hope your harvest is bountiful next year

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    1. Canned Pears sound wonderful! My husband likes to can sour cherries, they are delicious.

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  3. Ah! Canning is on my list of skills to learn/items to find time for. Sadly, I didn't get around to planting the garden this year. On the upside, I figure the ground has now had a year to rest so maybe next year will be plentiful!

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    1. Fortunately my husband grew up on a farm and knows all about canning. But when I was a child my parents canned also, in the days before we had a deep freeze. When I was a kid they chased us from the kitchen, but our kids have helped over the years with the canning, and will hopefully do it themselves one day.

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  4. Yeah my garden was a dud this year too....sigh. but I began to discover the tasty joys of canning!

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    1. It seems to have been a bad year for gardens for a lot of people this year.

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  5. Wow you are amazing! I can only imagine how hard it would be to have to buy it after eating the real stuff.

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    1. In the great scheme of things its a relatively minor complaint compared to say, starvation, but it does take a little of the joy out of things. But hopefully we'll enjoy it more next summer.

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    1. Oh I know. And with freshly cured bacon from the hogs...nothing like it.

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  7. Isn't everything so much better when you've grown it yourself? That's what i want when i am older a vegetable garden and a library in my house..

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    1. Every bite you take is flavored by the love and sweat you put into it.

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  8. I think it's neat that you are so connected to harvest and food sources. I would LOVE this! Living in suburban Houston with a pool instead of a backyard, we haven't found a way yet to do this well. But I dream of it! Great reminder of how much we take for granted.

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    1. We live in the middle of the urban jungle ourselves. But we are lucky enough to have family in the country who own some land and put several acres to garden each summer. My husband's mom and siblings and their families contribute to the garden each year and share in the harvest. It allows us to have a bit of the country all year. We have tried having a few tomato or pepper plants in our yard, just for salads and such, but haven't had much luck.

      Some day after I retire we hope to buy a few acres in the country somewhere and have our own garden. It's a few years away though.

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  9. Oh yeah homemade pasta sauce is the best, never made tomato sauce itself from scratch though. I'm not sure if it's psychological or truth, but cooking things from the stuff in our garden always tastes way better!

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    1. It is perhaps a little of both, but generally speaking if you make it from scratch it tastes how you want it to. So it tastes better.

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  10. Here I get all proud of myself for taking plain, store-bought tomato sauce and turning it into pasta sauce.
    I'm sorry to hear that your garden didn't survive. The weather here in Ohio was certainly unusual this summer. Here's hoping that next summer is more forgiving.

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    1. Thanks Cynk, I hope it will be better. One year isnt too bad, but two would be heartbreaking. We certainly did have seriously strange weather this year.

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  11. I wish I lived in a place more conducive to gardening! Freshly canned tomatoes sound heavenly right about now...
    Sorry to hear about your garden. :(

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    1. Thanks, Natalie. Since my husband gtew up on a farm, he isn't very happy with anything else.

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  12. "So much of the process is out of our control."
    You are so right.
    It makes me think twice about getting mad when my regular store is out of say, watermelon, and I have to go to another store to get it. Because in my modern-day mind I don't ever have to deal with starvation.

    Awesome post, and I wish you great luck with your garden next year!

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    1. Thankyou Dawn. I probably wont be nearly so pholosophical about it all in February.

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  13. You're so right! I never realized how much risk is involved until I did a CSA farmshare. One year we had a drought and mostly only harvested kale. A lot of yucky, yucky kale. You just never know. I read an article about cranberries, they're very dicey as well. After reading that, I am very motivated to support cranberry farmers, even though I'm not a huge fan of them as food, I'll drink anything infused with cranberries.

    I agree about jarred pre-made sauce, it's almost impossible to back to the store bought kind after you make fresh. If I have to go there, I buy canned/jarred tomatoes from the store and cook those with basil and garlic, at least it doesn't give me horrible heartburn like the jarred sauce does.
    Great post. Thanks for reminding us where our food comes from, we could use more of that!

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  14. I wish we had the place and temperature to grow our own tomatoes here....so cool! Thanks for sharing with us! And it is true...we forget that there was actually a time when farming was the difference between life and death.

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  15. Our tomatoes did particularly bad this year too - so much rain! Most of our garden was a loss. For some reason I have a terrible time with tomatoes as it is, enough to eat, but not enough to can. This year though the rain took most everything.

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