Since we don't have a range this year nor a real kitchen at the moment (while we live in the garage) I wasn't sure if I would get any canning done this year. I haven't done as much as normal but I am kind of excited about what we have gotten done. Also I have learned that I kind of like canning over a campfire. I would still love to have a kitchen sink to work with as I process my foods but I don't mind the canning over a campfire - it works pretty good.
This year we have been able to can 2 loads of tomatoes, 2 of salsa, 2 of applesauce and 1 of mince. Not a ton- but something for our cupboards and I am pretty happy. The tomatoes were all thanks to my parents and most of the apples were thanks to being able to pick at a friend's.
We have been doing all our waterbath canning on the campfire but this week my parents brought over a cute little old woodstove to cook on outside (since I like cooking outside and my parents thought that it would be nicer to have something higher up, that didn't make all of my pans black and didn't get smoke in my eyes so badly) and it was wonderful for cooking up my applesauce. When I had cooked the applesauce on the campfire before I had gotten it to hot and scorched a batch. The stove doesn't get as hot so it worked perfectly.
We did still do the canning over the campfire as we like it to stay nice and hot for that.
On these chilly days (guess how many layers I have on in the picture above) it is pretty nice to work around a fire or a woodstove. We are thankful for all the woodscraps from the house to burn and all the wood from clearing earlier this year. We are just wishing we could manage to have a woodstove here inside but have decided it might not be worth all the work and expense since we will hopefully be in our house soon.
Have you ever done any canning outside?
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