We are a long way from self sufficiency, but we have made a dent. One of our primary goals is to produce as much of our food as we can. We don’t really have an interest in keeping cows, meat chickens, or such – but produce is another matter.

We had hoped for a massive harvest this year – but as I alluded to in our last post – that isn’t going to happen. We did have some successes, but those were limited. We planted quite a few green beans with an eye to canning as much as we could.

Recently we had enough for a first batch, and I think we will have at least two more before we start to see a drop in production. I had six pounds of mixed Blue Lake Pole Beans and Dragon Tounge Bush Beans.

Blue lake pole beans are a stringless bean that is commonly grown in Oregon and are prolific producers of good beans. The Dragon Tongue beans drew our attention just because of their unique appearance. They are large, yellow with purple streaked beans of Dutch origin. Both beans taste great and held up in the refrigerator a few days for us to get enough worthy of a canning run.

I started with a mixed 6 pounds of beans, washed, rinsed, and cut into smaller pieces. I keep reading that it takes 1 pound of beans per pint. Maybe my pieces were too large or the addition of the thicker dragon tongue beans was such – but I ended up with 1/2 pound per pint.

We don’t have a great canning set-up at the moment. We have a glass cooktop in the kitchen that won’t sustain enough heat for reliable pressure canning. This leads us to use a gas camp stove on the back deck (or garage). It’s not particularly convenient but that will be changing soon (look for a future post about that).

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After doing bone broth last year, I found that our smaller canner wasn’t ideal – it takes a long time to can things, and being limited in the number of jars makes for a super long day. After some research, I bought an All American 30 Qt Aluminum Pressure Canner.

This is an American made canner that will process 14-quart or 19-pint jars. That enables us to process quite a bit all at one time. It’s a metal-on-metal seal with a pressure gauge and weighted regulator. I ordered this in the spring as, like many things, COVID has had an impact and larger canners are on backorder.

We are looking forward to more beans, corn, and other vegetables in a few weeks.

Canning Green/Wax Beans:

• 1/2 – 1 pound per Pint Beans
• 1/2 tsp canning salt per pint (optional)
• Hot Pack – boil beans for 5 min before packing into jars, fill with water leaving 1-inch headspace.
• Pressure can for 20 min (pints) or 25 min (quarts) at 10psi (under 1000 feet).

Links of Interest:

All American 30qt Pressure Canner – Lehman’s – an amazing website for homesteading. This is where I was able to find the canner. They are accepting backorders.
Dragon Tongue Beans – Territorial Seed Company
Blue Lake Pole Beans – Territorial Seed Company