Fall is busy. I once again failed to plant fall crops. Well, actually I did plant some, but let them dry out and they are dead now. It’s hard to want to plant more vegetables when I have shelves full of produce to process.

The tomatoes this year were a bit slow. Usually I’ll start getting small, early varieties in July. I don’t think I got a tomato until mid August. But they are making up for it now. The heirloom tomatoes in the huglekultur/swale beds are going crazy. I’ve made batch after batch of salsa (I’ve got an hefty supply of tomatillos too), ratatouille, and frozen crushed tomatoes.

The kids and I made a tomato stand and sold a few tomatoes. They were mainly Cherokee Purple tomato, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They do not can well because they are too juicy. I figured it out with a happy accident.

My grandmother gave me a juicer on a recent visit. It was sitting on the counter and needed to be cleaned up before I put it away. While we were cleaning it up, I decided to juice a few tomatoes to see how it worked.

And I ended up with six quarts of tomato juice, canned and ready for storage. The pulp was put in the freezer for soup and such. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get the motivation to can anything: I enjoyed just kind of slipping into it after my first idea to juice a few tomatoes grew big rather quick. It’s really good tomato juice too.