Canning Soup in GA with the Fuller Sisters

On Friday morning, October 24th, I dropped the girls off at school, headed back to the house, did some laundry, and then packed my bag for Helen. Around 9:30 I was headed down the road and ready for the weekend with the Fuller sisters (Aunt Margie, Louise, Linda, and Sandra, plus Uncle Tommy and Aunt Jane and Mr J). I was able to make good time and arrived in Helen not long after Aunt Sandra. We visited for a while and before long, Aunt Margie and Aunt Louise arrived. We helped get them unloaded and then we all had a late lunch. After lunch we ventured out to the grey building and started pulling out our individual buckets so that we could pick our ingredients for our soup. Once we pulled out all the buckets and labeled them, we started pulling out bags of various ingredients from the freezers in the barn and the grey building. We had one main recipe that were were working from, but as people decided they did not want something or wanted more or another item, the recipe was tweaked. Once we had unloaded all the frozen ingredients into the buckets, we headed back inside to start chopping the okra. Right about the time were finishing chopping the okra, Aunt Linda arrived. Everyone was excited to see her, but gave her a hard time about missing out on chopping the okra and said she was up next for the peppers. Before long, dinner was ready and we all enjoyed dinner and visiting. After dinner, Mr. J and I took off for Corneallia to Home Depot to pick up some items we needed for the next day's canning fest. While we were there we decided to pick up a couple more turkey cookers so we had additional burners for canning. When we arrived back at the house, we found the sisters were out in the barn and had removed all the frozen veggies from their bags in order to help with the thawing process. In addition, we also decided to go ahead and put the salt in jars (1 tsp in each Qt. jar) to save time in the morning. After the jars were done, we put some additional heaters out there, since it was a cool night, in order to hopefully help the veggies to thaw overnight.

The next morning, we all got up around 6 in order to get started with our canning early. We knew it was going to take a long time to get everything done and needed to start early. After we all got dressed and ate breakfast, we headed out to the grey building to check the frozen veggies. Unfortunately they did not thaw very much overnight, so we proceeded to thaw them in cookers, combine everything back in the large tubs, and then start canning. Since there were seven batches (the 5 sisters, Uncle Tommy's, and mine) it took a little while to thaw everything. Once we got the first couple of batches thawed (Aunt Margie's and Aunt Linda's), there tubs were taken to the sheltered area behind the barn where we had set up to can and they started putting their mixture in the jars and then in the hot water bath while we were working on thawing some of the other batches. Before we knew it we had thawed all the batches and each person was able to work on getting some of their mixture into the jars and then putting their first batch into the hot water bath. We were set up so that each person had their own pot and were able to get about 10-14 jars in each load. However it took 1 hour and 30 minutes per load after they came to a boil so with approximately 50 jars each, we were still in for a long day. Just as we all got our first batch in the hot water baths, Uncle Tommy and Aunt Jane arrived. We were all excited to see them. We all helped them get started and then got back to finishing getting our mixture in jars. Once all of the mixture was in jars, we were able to just switch them out as the day went on. The first period went pretty fast since were were still working on filling jars, cleaning up some, and visiting so when Aunt Sandra's first batch came up (she was the first one to have a batch done) it seemed so quick. Mr. J and I helped her get them out of the water, add some cool water (so that when the new jars were added they would not crack), and then get a new batch in the cooker.

The day was filled with visiting, switching out jars, keeping up with times of when the next batch would be done, and just having fun. Mid afternoon when I had just gotten my jars switched over and it seemed like a good time to slip away, I made my way over to Betty's IGA in Helen to pick up some Nora Mills grits since we were out of them at home. It was such a pretty day for a drive and when I arrived back at the house, it was about 30 minutes until my batch was ready to come out.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with finishing up the canning, cooking, visiting, and Aunt Linda and Mr. J playing with his new grill, the "Egg". That evening we had a great dinner and then everyone goofed off that evening.