We had a few black raspberries on the property in Ohio where I grew up. I assumed they were planted by the previous owner. Didn't know they grew wild. They were almost as good as blackberries.
We have picked gallons of raspberries, and my wife has made several batches of jam as well as freezing most of them for use in her smoothies over the winter. She has about two gallons of dried zucchini that she uses as seasoning and thickening for soups and stews. Our jam is always made with low-methoxyl pectin, so very little sugar is used. We took one of our freezers out of commission, as we don't need as much freezer space since the children have all moved out. She is making sweet relish to take to our SIL on our trip south, and much of the jam she has made in the past two days is going to Omaha with my son who is ending his visit with us tonight and flying back. Beans, tomatoes, peppers, peas, winter squash and corn are still coming, although we harvested and ate our biggest single sweet corn harvest in Alaska yesterday. Moose destroyed the currant harvest, and the gooseberries were damaged by sawflies. We got some cherries, which I ate, and there are tons of apples waiting to be harvested later in August or September. One son who lives in Eagle River is trying to breed black raspberries and blackberries that will survive here. They probably won't grow where we live, as we are much colder than at his house ER, but he has two plants of each surviving out of dozens he has cultivated. We'll see....
All this talk may sound like a Farmer's Market but when you start talking 'canning', you're just farmers talking. So, I say good on you. However, I get my canning down at the Grocer's Market.
Bill, I got the idea of the "Tomato stuff" as I call it from a Cajun cookbook that I have. It has a lot of gumbo recipes that are similar to my Tomato stuff.
The last, and only, thing I ever canned was blackberry jam. It was all gone almost faster than it took to prepare it, if you count picking the berries. That's just not right. Tried making persimmon jam once, but apparently picked them too green.
@Nancy Hart Persimmons are wonderful, if one knows how to use them. (I don't!). We had a number of Persimmon treesd in Missouri, but the lure of the wild blackberries, acres of them, over-ruled Persimmons! Frank
Not sure this is the right place to put this if not guess you can move it. We can some things but no garden crops since we don't have that many anymore. We will be doing some canningin next couple weeks but it will be store bought lima beans. Meat is just too high now so not canning any meat. it takes 3 lb.s a qt. or one pound a pint.Haven't canned meat in 2 years or more.It cost almost $300 last time for enough to make it worth the time and effect.
I don't do any canning. It's just the 2 of us now and I'd rather just buy stuff from the grocery store. My sister lives on a farm in south GA and spends all summer "putting up" stuff in her massive freezers. I don't think she does much canning anymore, but she puts up pickles, tomatoes, salsa, and jellies in jars. The stuff they don't grow themselves they get from neighbors, who are always calling and saying "the corn (or whatever) is in, come and get some." She had 2 bushels of tomatoes being "blanched" last time I talked to her. I remember as a kid going with my grandma to the local canning factory, where people prepared their vegetables and had them canned in the facility behind the local high school.
I use to do a lot of canning but it's so much easier to freeze it that I only can jams and jellies nowadays.
I wish we could grow enough to can but can't anmore.We use to buy from local farms by the sacks and bushels but not anymore. We use a tailgater for our canning and it works great like it was made to for canner. We have a good one its an All American holds 14 quarts or 21pints. I hear lids are hard to come by now though but we have planty for now.
We have lots of storms here at times we lose power. We do freeze too but if we run out of gas we can't use gasolene to run generator.Don't like to store gas except small amounts. We als obuy extra can goods sometimes when they were on sale.
What I miss most about Georgia summers was boiled peanut season. I'd love to have a freezer full of goobers but raw peanuts are unheard of in this area. Also miss my grandma's gigantic muscadine grapevine that would be loaded down and a kid's paradise.