My Aunt Carrie was back in Rockford a couple of weeks ago and she was nice enough to take some pictures of my Grandma’s Garden for me. My Grandma has raised a Garden every year since her children were young. She feed multiple people including my Dad who lives in Kansas annually.

This is my Grandma’s Garden this year. She uses the the jugs to hold down the tarp to keep out the weeds. She very much has a waste not want not mentality that most people no longer have. For instance she has never bought a Ziploc bag in her life. She prefers to use the bags that come in cereal boxes or bred bags instead. Reuse reuse reuse.

Beans ( Below)

My Grandma does tons of beans. When they come they need to be “blanched” in boiling water and then frozen in airtight bags & paper boxes. In the past they have used used a special funnel to feed the beans into the bags inside the boxes and then suck the air out before closing with a wire tie.

They made tomato juice cocktail adding some peppers & celery & onions to the tomatoes and cooking and then straining. They would then pour the hot tomato juice into sterilized jars and seal them. Grandma would also use a boiling water bath to process the jars for better preservation.



Now she freezes is and strains it later. If you have a big freezer, freezing things is pretty easy and SAFE! No need to worry about food poisoning. The other nice thing about freezing is that it’s also pretty easy to do in small quantities.

(Above) Pepper’s and Eggplant

( Above ) tomatoes

beans

Kale

My Grandparents are really big in to volunteer work and they let a volunteer group use the old garden patch and then all of the vegetables go to a charity .

beans, chinese cabbage on the left front, possibly kohl rabis behind that

Cucumbers climbing up the fence , and squash in the front

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

StumbleUpon

