Garden Roundup for 2023

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now, so I’m just forcing myself to finally finish this, so it’s probably a bit rough.

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I only started keeping track of how many eggs we got each day at the end of May.  But between then and December 31, our seven chickens gave us – assuming I didn’t miss some – a total of 598 eggs.  Which is almost 49 dozen.  We used some of them, but we also gave some out to family and neighbors.  I even sold a few dozen to co-workers. 

Besides keeping track for the whole year, I should also keep track of how much feed we buy for them.  Then I can figure out how a dozen of our eggs costs versus store bought ones.

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For the last several years, my mom has kept track of how much we freeze or can on a legal pad.  She’ll have green beans, and every quart we can she’ll add a tally mark.  She tries to keep up to date, but I think she misses some things, or double counts others.  And even though I help her most of the time, some things on her list I don’t remember canning.  So in 2024 I’ll try to do my own list.  But reading her list as best I can, this is what we froze in 2023: 25 bags of blueberries (1 bag makes 1 pie), 15 bags of sliced apples (1 bag makes 1 pie), 7 bags of grated zucchini (1 bag makes a couple loaves of zucchini bread), 2 bags of rhubarb (I think 1 bag makes 1 pie), 10 bags of parsnips (1 bag is probably worth 2 meals), 2 bags of broccoli, 4 bags of green peppers, and 9 bags of peas, although some of the peas were later canned with some other stuff.  And I think all the green peppers we used for spaghetti and pizza sauce we from 2022.

This is what we canned in 2023: 9 pints blueberry jelly, 5 pints grape jelly, 3 pints mixed berry jelly, 3 quarts and 8 pints of applesauce, 1 pint of pears, 6 pints of green beans, 2 pints of mixed vegetables, 1 quart and 15 pints of sweet corn, 9 pints of tomatoes, 15 quarts and 1 pint of spaghetti sauce, 1 pint and 9 half-pints of pizza sauce (1 half-pint is enough for one pizza), 18 quarts of grape juice, 5 pints of beets, and 19 quarts of potatoes. 

We also bought some items to can, such as 6 quarts of pears, 5 pints of peach jam, and 7 pints of strawberry jam.  We also froze two containers of sliced strawberries.

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2023 was a busy year, but we’ll have to see what we do in 2024.