Considering the strange start to the year, our garden did surprisingly
well, not so for tree fruit though. Unseasonably warm in February &
March sent all the trees into blossom way too early, then some killing
frosts put an end to all chances of a harvest. We have just one
apricot tree, it produced zero fruit; 3 peach trees, they set about 8
peaches between them but tree rats got them before they even came
close to ripening; 4 pear trees, zero fruit; 3 sweet cherry trees,
zero fruit; 50+ apple trees, grand total of 6 Empires.
Yesterday we spent about 3 hours shredding cabbage, which is now
salted, pounded, weighted down and today there's already signs of
fermentation so, in 4 or 5 weeks we should be ready to process
sauerkraut, a bit over 46 pounds of it. Nothing beats homemade 'kraut!
Gerry was still feeling ambitious earlier today so she went out and
dug a bunch of Jerusalem artichokes. After washing they weighed in at
just under 3 kilos. We've tried various ways of cooking them in the
past, always with rather malodorous results but I've been assured that
pickled sunchokes don't have that result so that's what will happen to
them tomorrow. I hope you're right George 'cause I saved, and we're
using, the recipe you posted back in January 2012 entitled "Sunchoke
recipe as adapted by me to modern preserving". The cauliflower, onion,
green & red pepper will also be from our garden. Looking forward to
the results.

Ross.
Southern Ontario, Canada