The Canning pantry on the farm has been in steady use for the past two years with not much refill, between my own personal health issues, Hubby’s foot issue getting him a medical leave to work full time from home for 6 months and the insane drought of 2025, full jars come up and empty ones go down. The biggest items added last year was peach sauce.

2026 is a turn over year and a restock year, a turn over year in the fact that anything three years older or more is getting eating, or turned into fodder and those jars are getting cleared, washed and hopefully most of them refilled.

We are heading into spring of 2026 with no canned beans, i mean i normally carry at least a two year supply sometimes upwards of a three year on our most favorite canned farm raised veggie, diced beans and we are OUT, out of bean, out of corn, both of those were full failures last year in the gardens, the coons got the corn early and took out our hopes there, turns out that area can grow corn but its not a good area for wildlife eating your corn, the beans got planted late in the new big garden and got heat stunted and then killed..

beets were ok in the kitchen garden but we did a fresh eating and storage and they were gone, as was the drought potato’s, they grew perfectly, they were double hilled, flowered and they put out a lovely crop of babies and then the drought hit and they died back and we just had buckets of itty bitty baby ones to harvest and eat, good eating but no winter storage.

So when i got the chance to pick up a big old bag of Quebec grown beets, i took it and added a 25 pound bag to process into jars until we can get our first new crop of the year, i am very much looking forward to having pickled beets regular back on the table.

Canning Pantry Count to April 2026 Total Jars to date 35

• 4 8oz jars of Black Current Jam
• 5 quart jars of grass fed stewing beef
• 9 pint jars of Chicken Barley Veg soup
• 9 pint jars of diced beets
• 7 quart jars of Sweet Pickled Beets
• 1 pint jar of Coltsfoot syrup