Beans, Beans the musical fruit....

So it's green bean season....yippee (and for those of you who know me, you know that was said with pure sarcasm!). This weekend we spent all day Sunday picking, popping, and canning beans. Now I enjoy green beans from a can (home canned preferably but store bought are good too) but I hate fresh green beans. I know I'm weird! I think they taste nasty, they're a pain to pick, and then you have to spend all that time popping the ends off. I need to hire someone to work in the fields for this crop!

Anyways, our green beans are always our biggest crop, and they provide us with a lot of fresh produce during the winter. So even though I have a love-HATE relationship with these things, I do truly appreciate them!

Here's what we do:

After eating green beans every night for weeks, we can all the rest. This Sunday we canned 14 quarts, 8 pints, and still have a 5 gallon bucket to deal with. OH, and we probably have just as many, if not more, ready to be picked...AGAIN!

First, pick the beans. Notice that my mom is helping again but she has a nice chair to sit on. I bet her back and legs haven't been killing her all week!





After snapping the ends off and picking out the bad beans, its time to clean them off.


You also need to make sure the jars and lids are good and clean. Then put the beans into the jars. Last year we did some jars with whole beans in them but decided we like them better when they're broken in half because you can fit more in the jar, but it's completely personal preference. After the jars are stuffed, fill them with boiling water and add a pinch of salt.



We use a pressure cooker to can our produce. It works a little faster than other methods. But whatever method you use, make sure you read the directions! Our pressure cooker had us cook the beans for 25 minutes after the right pressure was reached.



Once they're done, the beans will come out a darker green. You'll hear a popping noise from each can as it cools letting you know it's sealed properly.


The cans on the left are done (darker green) and the one on the right hasn't been in the pressure cooker yet (brighter green)



Now we'll do it all over again this coming weekend!

Oh, and we had our first tomatoes this week. I ate them before I could take a picture...yum!