Over the past couple of weeks, I've been preserving tomatoes like crazy--tomatoes of all sorts. Mini-gold gumballs frozen raw to preserve our "Goldnuggets" and "Sungolds"; paste and whole blanched "San Marzanos"; and crinkly, deep reddish-brown oven-dried "Cherry Red" grape tomatoes. At some point I simply stopped trying to keep an accurate count of the weight, but I estimate at least 40 lbs of tomatoes have made their way through my kitchen in the past two days alone.
We are a family of five: myself, my husband and our three children, ages 11, 10 and 9, homesteading on 5.25 acres in the Northwestern Mountain Region of Maryland (zone 6b). Our land is home to many creatures, and our goals are to farm sustainably, to preserve biodiversity by growing heirloom plants and raising rare breeds of livestock and poultry, and to foster native habitats. The kids and I run a small CSA, which keeps us busy learning and playing.