Here lately we have been canning dewberries! We have gathered and picked close to 4 gallons. We so far have made a dewberry crumble, dewberry jelly, canned dewberries in a light syrup and in the near future, are going to make some delicious dewberry dumplings! I have never made them but my mother-in-law told me a simple way to do so. I am not one that likes dewberries too much. I can not handle the seeds. I do enjoy the jelly and feel as though I will enjoy the dumplings. I can make them by straining the juice off of the berries first and then drop the dumplings into seed-free juice! Here are the beautiful berries we canned just a few days ago.

I have quite a few of the berries frozen but I really like the fact that I can just pop open a jar  and make something very fast without having to wait for the berries to thaw! I can even make jelly with these berries in a jar. I have been thinking alot about  trying to do lots and lots of canning this year. I always can but not to the extint I want to this year.

I feel that if I can put most of our garden in cans, we are guaranteed food! I am always fearful of freezing everything and then down here in the south have some kind of bad weather and lose electricity. You know what that means.....a possibility of losing everything you worked so hard to put in your freezer! 

In about a week, we are going to be slaughtering about 25 meat chickens. I plan on putting most of them whole in the freezer. I don't know any other way. Maybe I am worrying about it to much.  I am wanting to try something I have never done before. Can homemade chicken broth. I usually freeze all of my broth but since I want to CAN almost everything this year, why not can chicken! I am really excited to see how it turns out. Just like the berries, I won't have to wait for the broth to thaw out. I can just open a jar of broth and enjoy!

Wish me luck!

God Bless!