It was quite cold yesterday morning such that when we got out of the tub there was ice on the cover where the condensation had frozen just since we opened it. I took this as an omen that I would likely be working indoors most of the day. It was the first day of NanoWriMo as well so I needed to get my first story finished which I did in rather quick fashion.
Before taking R to school I managed to get the tomatoes all picked. I was able to empty all but 2 paper bags of the tomatoes, all the larger sized ones. It was super amazing that they all were ripe at once.
Then I went through and picked all the cherry tomatoes that were hanging above the bags. Letting them hang allowed them to ripen slowly and we have had to toss only a very small amount of them so far. All the tomatoes did outstanding this year. This really is the proper way to ripen tomatoes off the plants. Over the winter I will be designing and building a rack or shelving system for just this purpose next year.
With R in school I had a couple hours to juice the tomatoes. First I started with the cherry and medium sized. There weren't a lot of cherry which are all yellow so they didn't discolor the juice too much. I finished the tub then poured the juice into the kettle.
Next I went at the larger tomatoes that need to be cut up before juicing. I would cut up a cutting board full of them then run them all through. It took me a couple runs to finish the tub of tomatoes. The juice got poured into the kettle with the other.
The second tub of larger went though the same process of cutting them up then stuffing them into the juicer.
The juice came out beautifully and all got poured into the kettle on the stove where it sat until I got home from picking the boys up from school.
I took a break to put in orders for my new ham radio and equipment. I am getting the Yaesu FT-991A radio that will do HF/VHF/UHF so I will have full capabilities for when I can get my general license. The radio was out of stock most places I looked online and I went to Amazon to see if they had. The company selling the radio through Amazon was Gigparts so I just went to their website and ordered direct from them which meant no Amazon markup and I got a $25 discount code. I should have most if not all the orders by next week which is also when I should be getting my real callsign.
Once home I got the juice heating while I found and hand washed a load of quart mason jars. I also got the big kettle filled with water and heating along side the juice.
It took almost 2 hours for the water bath to be boiling and the juice to be hot and reduced a little bit in the kettle. I filled 7 quarts with the juice and ran the hot water bath for 45 minutes.
While the quarts ran I let the juice simmer on the stove and reduce a little more. I found 5 pint jars in the pantry and washed them for the balance of the juice.
The 5 pints went in the water bath and boiled away for 35 minutes before I pulled them and stacked them with the quarts to cool over night. They all look great this morning, though a bit warm still, but the lids all look tight.
Ended the night back soaking.
I easily got my first story written for NanoWriMo yesterday and have the next to write today. It only took me about an hour to get 1800+ words down so I have high hopes for the rest. Today both boys have school, it is warmer so I hope to get out and finish dealing with the garden, and maybe do some organizing in the pantry to make room for the juiced tomatoes.
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