Canning Grean Beans

 

One of the greatest gifts I ever gave myself was acknowledging that in some things I am very strange.  These are usually the things I love most about myself.  One of the strangest things I enjoy is listening to the pressure canner hissing away on the wood burning kitchen range.  Even on the hottest days, when lighting a wood fire seems counterproductive, I can't wait to can the harvest.

Here I am canning green beans fresh from the garden.  There's nothing much to this video, just the wood stove in the summer kitchen and the pressure canner bubbling away.  The trick to canning on a wood stove is to know the stove, know where the hottest part of the stove is and that is where the canner sits.  Then it's just putting in dry wood to keep that heat constant.  Green beans are easy, 20 minutes and they're done.  Meats are a bit harder, and hour and a half of making sure to keep a hot fire going.  Still, I would rather do my canning out here than heat up the whole house during the hottest days of the year.

A morning's worth of green beans ready to go into the cellar.  Ol' Man Winter can shake his icy fist as much as he wishes this year.  Our food bins and shelves will be filled to overflowing.