The Start of My Wonderful Canning Journey

Growing up in New York City, I can safely say growing food and preserving it was a thought that never crossed my mind. Grocery stores were always within walking distance, and my city never slept. What could I ever need that wasn’t at my fingertips 24/7? When I moved to Amish Country, PA, that all changed. Hardly anything is “walkable”, rarely are stores open past 9pm, and you can forget about finding a good cup of coffee on Sundays. It wasn’t until I was immersed in the local culture that I discovered an alternative way of living. 

I moved from NYC to the Lancaster County area about 15 years ago, in short, for love. Fortunately my then-boyfriend is now my husband, but he was the only connection I had to the area when I first moved here. His family’s ways were all I really was surrounded with, so I quickly learned a thing or two. Blanching corn was a foreign concept to me: why do all this work on a weekend (hundreds of ears at a time!) when you can just go to the grocery store and buy a bag of frozen corn for less than $2? As soon as I bit into a cob of fresh, locally grown corn I had my answer. The corn was delicious, and like nothing I’d ever tasted before! I very quickly understood that all the work was well worth it.  

Corn turned out to be the gateway for the beginning of my food preservation journey. I am by no means an expert food processor and preserver, but I find great joy in growing and preserving foods to stock our pantry shelves and freezers with. The meat birds I raise on our property provide chicken for my family for the year, as well as bone broth for soups and more. My garden may be small by most standards, but my tomato and pepper harvest is known to be mighty. My kids love pulling jars of homemade salsa off the shelves, or dumping a jar of pasta sauce into the pot of spaghetti. I recently acquired a dehydrator and love putting a load of freshly picked herbs into it at night, to wake up and be able to store them on my shelf for the months ahead. Things that I never knew about now seem like second nature for me and our family. 

While all of that might sound dream-worthy to some of you, I recognize that I could be doing more, but simply cannot do it all on the acre that we are on. I wish I had room for a dairy cow or beef herd. I’d be willing to bet my kids would lobby their hearts out to have some goats on our property. Usually by mid-August, I am completely overwhelmed by the eight garden beds that I do have, so growing all of the fruits and vegetables we consume is out of the question for now. But, I have come to appreciate, and even seek out, locally sourced foods whenever I can.  We have a local farmer friend we get our grass finished beef from. There are dozens of local produce stands, Amish or English, that are open seasonally, not to mention the produce auction that is less than an hour away. If I can’t grow it myself, I find someone locally who has. Doesn’t matter to me who grew it, as long as I can preserve it.

Thanks for joining me as I start this journey! My hope is that you can learn something alongside me as I live my life, and hopefully laugh a little too! In the next few posts, I’m excited to share a little more about my food preservation journey, some lifestyle posts that will give you insight into our little homestead, and more about the chickens I do actually have here on the property. It’s going to be a little bougie, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. 

xoxo

The Bougie Farmer