I've been working my way through the stuff in the freezer pretty consistently for months now, and the freezer is emptying out. I think I still have some green beans, snap peas, asparagus and southern peas in the freezer, and maybe a few onions. Other than that, we've about used up what I froze. We still have tons and tons of canned stuff, but that's partly because I can 2 years worth in any given year, if I can, so that we are covered if there is a crop failure in the following year. (One problem with this is that there is almost never a crop failure!) I use food from our garden that has been frozen, canned, dehydrated or root cellared every week. I have to. If I don't, there's nowhere to put the next year's harvest.

It seems like you've got more put up in the deep freeze than y'all have been able to use this year? I know that is frustrating, but you'll use it up eventually. Is there anyone else you can share some of the ground up tomatoes with?

In jars we still have plenty of salsa, chili base, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, canned tomatoes, candied jalapenos, jelly and jam, sauerkraut, pickles of all kinds, pickle relish, fermented peppers, fermented pepper sauce, etc. I expect we'll use up most of this by June, which is a good thing because that's when I start filling up the pantry again.

Being a home gardener/food preserver is almost like being a hamster on a wheel---the more you grow and preserve, the more you need to eat and use so that you can grow and preserve more and then eat and use more.....

When I have too much home-preserved food still in storage and harvest season rolls around again, I preserve less of the current harvest and give away the excess instead of preserving too much of it.

Dawn, I was always able to use stuff up, or give it away. My daughter and son-in-law divorced last year, much to my disagreement, disappointment, heartache and even outright interference with the divorce. Done is done, and despite all their sorrow, and regret, we are where we are. Now, nobody cooks, except me, and I've been sick. This is why I want to change my garden. There's nobody to care anymore, except me. I want to grow what I like this year.

OMG. I just re-read what I posted. What a whiny bunch of mess. I'll just throw that da&m stuff out and quit worrying about it. lol

I didn't read it as whiny. I read it as a description of why you are making changes. Divorces are hard on families, and not just on the particular people involved in obtaining the divorce.

If you're the only one cooking now, then you get to do what you want!

I say go for it, make the changes, do what makes you happy. Grow what you love to eat. I love, love, love muskmelons and icebox melons and never seem to grow enough of them, largely because I devote too much space to other things that I do not love as much. So, this year, the back garden is going to be so full of melons that I hope I'm forced to eat them three times a day.

Your garden and the food you preserve from it should bring you joy. If the joy is gone, toss the excess food and move on. Your garden, your wants, your wishes, your desires. There's so much in this world that we cannot control, but we can at least control what we choose to plant, how much of it we plant and where we choose to plant it.

I don't think you are being whiny either. Don't be hard on yourself. You have been through tremendous trauma emotionally and physically. Take it easy on you this year. Let this be a you year. If you have a dehydrator you can dry your tomatoes turn them into powder and then store them in the pantry to make sauce or paste or simply add to stews and soups. Onions and peppers too. Takes up less room and when 95%dehydrated lasts a lot longer. There are great tutorials on YouTube by a woman at dehydrate2store. I even made my own sweet potato flour. It's an amazing tool. I still have 1 freezer full of berries and broth but most of my garden stuff is dried or canned.

You are both right. I should do whatever I want this time. This is MY year. I'm going to ask a lot of stupid questions! This year, I am growing what I WANT.

There are no stupid questions.

So, let's make it clear now: 2017 is Mary's year and everyone else better get out of her way and let her do what she chooses. You go, girl!

You survived a heart attack. If that is not reason enough to choose this year to have your best, most self-directed garden, than what is? This should be your year to celebrate life and to grow your garden FOR you, not for everyone else. If any of those other people start complaining about what you are growing, suggest they plant their own garden to meet their own needs.

Me too. I am focusing a portion of my garden specifically for me and the rest for market. I wasn't going to but last year I sold a lot of my produce that I could have and should have been eating. This year I am trying new things too just for fun. If nothing else I will learn something from it. Now off to set up lights.

I'm laughing. It's been a crazy few months, and it might get crazier before it's all over! :) No rules! lol

Have fun with it! Embrace the change! Make it fun and interesting again! Sometimes it is fun to take a year and do things very different from the way you normally do them in the garden. You know, it is easy for us gardeners to get in ruts within our gardens as we tend to just keep on doing what has been working. I think it can be fun sometimes to do things differently just to see what happens. Every now and then I think it would be fun to take a whole year and grow nothing but flowers, but then I realize that there's no way we could tolerate eating store-bought produce for a whole year, so I don't do it.

Well, I went through the freezer earlier, and dragged out quartered
peeled tomatoes of every color, chopped up bell pepper, sliced zucchini,
chopped onions, and then I cleaned out the veggie bin in the fridge
using the last of carrots, celery, and some garlic, chopped up a couple
of yukon gold potatoes that are soon to be past their prime, and went
out to the garden and scavenged some fresh thyme and even a bit of fresh
parsley that is regrowing from the carcass of dead parsley, dumped in a
handful of lentils and barley, some cumin, oregano, and other spices,
and now have a huge pot of vegetable soup on the stove. I'll throw a
little macaroni in before it's over, and sprinkle a big bowl with some
fresh parmesan cheese. I had apples left over from New Year's, and
chopped those up with some celery, grapes, toasted pecans, marshmallows,
and some Hellman's. So, I think I'll be getting my fruits and veggies
for the next few days. I'm on a mission to cook with all those tomatoes
in the deep freeze. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?

It is a gorgeous day and it says like you've had a big day in the kitchen cooking up some wonderfully healthy foods. Good luck working your way through the tomatoes in the deep freeze. I know you can do it! By the time you empty it out, maybe you'll be getting to eat 2017's fresh home-grown tomatoes.

I opened my freezer the other day and found it full to the brim. I know there are tomatoes in there, but what else has DH stashed in there!? I make chicken and beef stock from bones. That takes up a lot of room, too. I hate looking for things in there and he's bad about not labeling things, so I pull things out and wonder what the heck that unappetizing mass of previously cooked something might be. Part of the problem is we went from cooking for 6 (and three were teen aged boys) to cooking for 2. We don't know how to cook for less than an army. On the off chance we make just enough for 2 a kid will show up at dinner time looking hungry. I won't let him buy any more meat till we pare down the freezer, but, dang, it never goes down. (And we're still eating meat). If I had a second freezer he would fill that, too. I read a horoscope for him when we first got together. It said he would be likely to have a case of paprika under the bed. (A food horder) There's no paprika, but the pantry's well stocked. I've had broke kids come "shop" mom and dad's pantry.

lol. We are almost as bad, except we do try to label stuff, and that makes a difference. It is true that if you have another freezer, you'll fill it up. I fill up two every summer, and sometimes three, but I try to empty them out, gradually consolidating everything down to the one deep freeze in the house before the new garden harvest season begins. Then, the new harvest goes into the garage freezer while we are still emptying out the house's deep freeze of home-grown stuff. Eventually I can move the home-grown stuff from the garage freezer to the house freezer. It is a never ending cycle.

Amy, I understand the food "investing". I am not sure when it started, but I guess somewhere along the way I was afraid of not having enough, so I tend to overstock. Plus, I once cooked for six, and now I generally just cook for myself. That pot of soup is in 3 containers now, and 2 of them will go into the freezer for another time. I have a small kitchen, so it's difficult to over-stuff those cabinets. After I came home from the hospital the last time, I was able to eat out of my cabinets and freezer for a month. My daughter picked up some milk, and fresh fruit, etc., but my freezer had plenty of frozen meals/foods. I do like to stay stocked on basics like lentils, beans, pasta, rice, etc. I keep those in glass jars in the pantry. I don't usually have a lot of meat, though. I don't buy it like I use to. I'll keep frozen bacon and ham chunks, for beans, but there is just no need for me to keep a lot of meat. Before I got sick, I used to buy the family pack of chicken breasts at WalMart, and divide them up into single portions and put those in the deep freeze. I find myself craving meat sometimes, though. I've noticed my taste buds have changed, but I am not sure why, but one of the doctors said it could be medications. I eat a lot of grapes and clementines, apples, carrots and peas, broccoli, and sweet potatoes. I have more of a sweet tooth, which is something I really never had before. Some of the things I used to love, like mashed potatoes, and even things like ketchup...I don't want anymore. Weird. Oh well, using up the garden produce/cleaning out our freezers is always a good thing.

I think that is so funny. We sort of did the same thing years ago. I had my grandmother's very old freezer and, when we replaced it, we bought a smaller one. Then we had a huge fruit year and I wanted to freeze a lot of peaches, so we went and bought the biggest chest freezer we could find. It sits along the garage's back wall. I fill up the smaller upright one first, then the large chest freezer and then, if that isn't enough, I use the freezer on the extra fridge in the garage. It is crazy that we thought we only needed the smaller upright freezer. Of course, for freezers to be worth having, you have to continually rotate out the older stuff and actually use it instead of burying it under the newer stuff. I have to work hard to do it properly.

When the kids were small we had what they called a 3/4 size chest freezer. With careful tetrus skills it would hold "half of a half" side of beef (that's how the butcher sold it.) If my kids hadn't sat on it and destroyed the lid I bet it would still be working. Then we got an upright. I could never get as much in it and it died after 2 years. Our current chest freezer probably is not as big as the first. We used to use milk crates to organize, but I'm not strong enough to lift that much now. We use reusable shopping bags now. SUPPOSEDLY meat in one, veggies in another, broth, etc. But the OCD nut is more interested in using all the space than keeping it organized. How did we survive all those years with just a fridge freezer?

I have read that setting a freezer to a temp above freezing is more economical to run than a regular fridge. Don't know if it's true, but I always thought if I had an extra freezer I'd try it. As if it wouldn't be full of frozen stuff...

Our chest freezer has built-in sliding blue compartments that look sort of like milk crates. They slide back and forth from one place to another so you reach items stored beneath them. There's always two open slots where there's no sliding compartments on the upper level, which allows you to slide those compartments back and forth. I try to organize the siding storage compartments....tomatoes in one or two, beans in another 1 or 2, corn in others, etc. but even when I start out organized, I don't always end up that way by the end of the season. At a certain point, if I'm swamped with produce I'm just processing it, packing it into freezer bags or freezer boxes, labeling them and tossing them into the freezer, figuring I'll get it all organized on a slower, quieter day. Sometimes that day is slow to arrive, but when it does, I always find things I forgot were in there---like frozen peaches from the previous summer or something. In that sense, it can be a treasure hunt.

When Tim's dad retired (and his mom was still working), he about drove Tim's mom berserk. First he reorganized the kitchen, which was a big mistake since the only cooking he ever did was to grill things outside. She testily told him he had better put her kitchen back the way she had it unless he was planning to take over 100% of the cooking chores. It was hysterically funny to us 'kids', who of course, all were married and had our own kids by then. He quickly restored the kitchen to its proper state, but then did proceed to try to do the same thing with the rest of the house. I'm not sure why she didn't just kill him then and there because she was steaming hot. He eventually learned that she had a system that had worked for them for 40 years and he'd better not mess it up. He got more involved in community volunteer work to keep him busy and to avoid ruining their happy home life. I am thankful that I do not have that problem. I won't say that Tim never interferes in how I have things organized, but when he does it, he learns not to do it again. The first time, I patiently explain "I had things like that for a reason....." and explain the reason. If he messes up the same thing again, I tell him to stop moving things around where I cannot find them unless he intends to take over that particular household chore. Since he has no desire to take on more work, he backs off and leaves things alone. I don't go out to the garage and rearrange his stuff and he doesn't come into the house and rearrange my stuff. It works for us.

My husband is smarter than the average bear. (Remember Yogi Bear? I loved Yogi when I was a child.) He particularly understands the garden is my domain and doesn't touch anything in there. Ditto with the greenhouse, potting shed and the weight room during the months it becomes the light shelf/plant room. He is bad about putting stuff in the garage fridge (like an extra gallon of milk or something) and forgetting it is out there, so I try to keep an eye on that fridge in winter. In the summer, I use it enough that I know what he has in there.

We have used an old refrigerator (bought on Craig's List for $50 as an extra freezer) by setting the temperature settings so low that everything in the fridge compartment also freezes, but we haven't tried using a freezer as a fridge.

Good ideas about frigs freezers and husbands. I learn so much here I hardly have time to read a book.

My deep freeze has 4 sliding baskets that came with it, and I added a couple more of those cheap plastic baskets from one of the dollar stores. I also have some things (spices) in just plain old grocery store plastic bags. Even so, the bottom of the freezer is still buried in bags of tomatoes.

I get tickled when I read about training husbands to not try to organize certain parts of our lives. They just want to be helpful;)

While I was going through the process of having my knee and hip surgeries I was basically bed ridden. DH and my oldest son did all cooking and what little cleaning that happened. But he has always done a lot of the cooking. He did move things around. I have left most of it. Now the issue is that I've shrunk enough and lost arm strength. He LOVES to nest things. That means I either pull 6 pans out all at once (too heavy) or I have to pull them out singly to get to what I want (time consuming) he does it with glass casseole dishes, too. I am OCD to, I want what I use most to be convenient to access. He organizes from smallest to largest. And in any random situation he will do it the opposite of the way I do it. But we've been doing that for 40 years.

It is interesting, a freind of mine's husband just retired and he wanted to reorganize her kitchen. There must be some psycological thing going on due to the change in lifestyle.

Our freezer came with ONE sliding basket. DH would never leave room for anything to slide. He would stick something big there, LOL.