Drying sweet corn

Thanks for the idea about saving extra sweet corn and letting it mature in the garden. How dry does the corn get? Hard like field corn? We’re putting our garden to bed, and wondered when to harvest the ears. What steps do we take up to storage?

Carol Bandy
Hightown, Virginia

Mature sweet corn gets as hard as field corn. Remember what the sweet corn seeds were like when you planted them? That hard. We leave the corn on the stalk until the leaves and shucks are tan and dry and the corn is as dry as it will get in the field. Then we shuck the ears and lay them out in a rodent-proof place or hang them up to dry them fully. Once dry and hard, the kernels can be shelled and stored in an airtight, rodent-proof container. — Jackie

Storing food for a year

I have a quick question. Have you ever totaled how much produce, meat, goat milk products in quantity and/or pounds you have canned/stored for one entire year when your son was a teenager (16-17)? I am wanting to know how much is enough for 2 adults and a teenager for one year.

I just started to learn how to make my own cheese –“squeaky” cheese for now, but hope to graduate to pressed cheese soon. Also make my own bacon and sausages and am now starting to learn to dry cured meats.
 
Monica Blaney
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada

No, I really haven’t. I have always canned/stored as much as I could, in any event. I’m just not a list kind of person, I guess. And it makes a huge difference of how much you actually will use. For instance, when you can “get out” to buy such things as bread, you’d be surprised at how much more flour you use when you cannot get out to buy it. And noodles, and pies and cookies… My advice would be to can up and store what you can without creating hardship then see how that year’s pantry does for feeding you. You can adjust it next year. No two gardens ever produce the same, from year to year, and when I have a bounty, I can up every bit I can and give friends the rest. I just finished canning my last tomatoes today as barbecue sauce… and we have four inches of snow on the ground!

Good for you for starting to make cheese. There are several very easy cheeses to start with and they’re pretty much foolproof. It’s neat that you’re also making bacon, sausages, and dry cured meats! What great lifeskills to learn. — Jackie

2 COMMENTS

  2. Thanks for the compliment regarding the cheese. It is so satisfying knowing that my family is getting food that is chemical/hormone free. I buy all my meats and eggs from a local farmer that uses sustainable practices to the point that he does not use a tractor for his 200 acres – its all done with horses (but to be fair he loves horses and enjoys working with them). He and his wife also run a Community Supported Agriculture program and we got loads of veggies this past month to complement my small garden. Because of limited space I grow my tomatoes from bags hanging from rafters, potatoes in sacks on the concrete and every space of front and side yards. People might scoff at tomatoes plants in my front beds where usually people plant flowers but they don’t scoff by august when they see huge ripe juicy red tomatoes.

    I had a challenge with canning because fool that I was I went and bought a glass topped stove but thanks to your advice a while back I got a one burner element that does heat high enough to boil water and the beauty of it is I can use it outside in the 40 degree (with humidex) weather we get in July and not heat up the house.

    I bought your books and will be going full bore next summer by buying more from the farmers markets to can additional produce above what I can grow myself. Right now I am dry curing pig cheeks – very very tender fat.

    Love your blog and your writing.

    (I started a blog but don’t have much time right now – hope to start adding more after I find out if I get my master’s this year or not – farmgirlwanabe on blogspot – I have pictures of making bacon on it so far – the blog is to help people learn how to make bacon, sausages, cheese etc).

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