Thought I might just take a couple of pictures of the canning process that has started here…
It is work to say the least…
I do my canning in my garage (note all of the clutter and chaos!). That way I can keep the heat from the gas range out of the house…
The pressure canners are Mirro and they are close or a bit over 30 years old—at least the smaller one is…
The small one is a 12 quart pressure cooker and the one on the right is a 22 quart pressure cooker. They both will process 7 quarts of product and 7 or 8 pints of product, but the 22 quart one is taller and will allow pints to be stacked on a rack that sits on the bottom layer of pints. Total—16 wide mouth pints and 20 regular mouth pints…
That is spaghetti sauce I just processed. It got all the ingredients together yesterday after work and done the canning this morning. Total time for picking veggies to final canned quarts—at least 10 hours!!! A very time consuming chore…
Note the tongs on the right of the picture—necessary to remove the jars from the cookers…
I boil the sauce for about 1.5 hours and then put it in the quarts. I process for 10 minutes on 10 pounds of pressure…
Venison takes 75-90 minutes on 10 pounds of pressure, depending on the size of the jars…
So there it is—the canning season has started in Western PA…
Good –luck to any who care to venture into this task…
BCB
Note the lead ingots on the left side of the picture of the quarts—yep, I cast in the garage also…