Ready, set, grow! Now that the gardening season is in full swing, I’ve been fielding numerous phone calls and emails from clients eager to make the most out of their summer gardens. For those of you who may not have a green thumb, you can enjoy the fresh tastes of summer by patroning either the Ellijay Farmers Market or Blue Ridge Farmers Market each Saturday. Both markets have a great assortment of vendors and there really is nothing quite like the taste of locally grown produce.
Many folks who have gardens grow enough produce to have some left over to put away for the winter. Home preservation options like canning are becoming more and more popular, and when it comes to canning, there is a lot of information that can be found on the subject. My mother and I have been making muscadine jelly for as long as I can remember, but if you were to ask me how to can green beans, I’d need to take a step back and ask our Gilmer County Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) Agent, Jessie Moore, for some safe food handling procedures.
This is where I think folks can get tripped up with home food preservation, as not all vegetables or home preservation methods are created equal. A hot water bath may work for some commodities, but not others. For example, tomatoes are treated as an acid food for canning purposes. While many tomato products may be safely canned in a boiling water canner, since tomatoes can vary from batch to batch, some may end up slightly less acidic for canning purposes. Thus, added acid is required in the boiling water canning of plain tomatoes, juice and sauce.
This time of year, folks have lots of questions about canning and we are truly fortunate to have a food safety expert housed in the Gilmer County Extension office. With these factors in mind, the Gilmer and Fannin County Extension offices have decided to team up to offer a robust home canning workshop!
Scheduled for July 21st from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, the workshop will not only cover the basics of home canning and food safety factors, but it will also have a hands-on component where class participants will actually prepare and preserve green beans and tomatoes using the pressure cooker and hot water bath methods.
The Gilmer and Fannin Extension offices are excited to partner with the Fannin County Young Farmers and the Fannin County School System to offer you this great opportunity to learn the ins and outs of safe home food preservation from a local expert.
We’d love to have you join us for this workshop, but please note that space in the workshop will be limited to 20 participants and will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. The cost to attend is $25.00 per person.
Registration is being handled through the Fannin County Extension office, so please direct any questions you may have about the program to the Blue Ridge location. You may reach us at 706-632-3061 or uge1111@uga.edu.
