750 Mason Jars: The Year I Tried to Do It All

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Lesson

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hey doll, and welcome to the Gorham Homestead Podcast. Keeping it real with Don Gorham. Today is Friday, June the 5th, 2026, and you are listening to episode number 27. And the topic that I'm going to talk about today is something I've sort of been leading up to all week. I'm going to talk about the year I tried to do it all. 750 canned mason jars, a full-time job, and a suburban backyard homestead. So the main goal of today, what we're going to talk about mostly, is that natural living is not about doing everything. It's about finding food that you can trust and building a lifestyle that is sustainable for the long haul. Like what works for you? How does it fit into your life? And so years ago, before I had the dairy, before I had a farm, you know, I was before I was even teaching workshops, although the thought had been an inkling in my mind, or a hosting tongue-tied, or hosting markets, I was a working mom in a subdivision with an HOA. And it was only one year that I did it, but one year I was able to can 750 jars in a single summer while working a full-time job, while having a husband, six children, and a backyard that I had essentially turned into a homestead within the four walls of our privacy fence, or three walls, I guess. But looking back, I'm I'm super proud of what I accomplished that summer. Like I was so proud of myself. It was one of those at the end of the season, you look back, and you know, I'm very OCD. So all of my jars were organized by color and type. And I had the red next to the yellow, next to the green pickles, and everything was just beautiful. But I'm not sure that the 750 jars are the biggest lesson that I learned from that year. So let me back up. I've talked to it, talked to y'all about it a little bit before, but let me tell you how it all started.

The Doctor Visit That Changed Food

SPEAKER_01 2:20

My son, it's well, it started with a doctor's visit. My son was having some developmental delays, and we visited a holistic doctor out in Cool Springs. And, you know, he wasn't talking, he wasn't crawling, he wasn't doing all of these things. And we were concerned that he was on the autism spectrum. And when I left that day, I left with pretty much like a five-page list of all the things that he could and could not have. And a lot of it talked about food dyes, a lot of it talked about organic. And I had never even heard the word organic. Like when I went to that doctor's visit, like I was like, kind of knew just by context what it meant, but I hadn't really heard of buying organic food. And suddenly I needed dye-free food, I needed pesticide-free food. He was very big on making sure I didn't get glyphosate in any of our foods. The doctor was very big on making sure we used clean ingredients. And that like it felt super overwhelming when I left the doctor that day. So I set out with this big plan, and I was going to, you know, go see what I could find. The doctor told me to go to Whole Foods Market. Of course, I was in Green Hills in Nashville, which is one of the more affluent areas of town. And so I went and I was using my list, and you know, the problem with the whole thing was that Whole Foods became my primary source. Because at the time you couldn't really get organic stuff at Kroger. There wasn't really a whole lot at Publix that I even knew of. And Whole Foods was like the only place that I knew that I could go. And that's kind of what they were known for. But oh my gosh, the darn food was so expensive. And it was hard to find exactly what I needed. And I had to learn to read the labels, which I had never done. I had never even, it never even occurred to me to like to look at the back of the boxes. Like I just assumed that the food that we were buying for our family was, you know, was safe. I'd always heard shop the outer aisles, which we did a lot of. But I also, you know, I didn't even think about dyes and glyphosate and all that kind of stuff. That was just not on my radar. So the the other problem was that I wanted to start preserving some food because I'd grown up like that. And so that was one of those things that came back into my mind, like, okay, well, you know, if I want to have this stuff, then then I need to start preserving it. And it was hard for me to find particular varieties that I wanted. Like I like Bradley tomatoes for canning. I like this one particular bush blue lake green bean. I like purple hull peas. I like peaches and cream corn. And finding exactly

Learning Labels And The $400 Wakeup

SPEAKER_01 5:30

what I wanted when I wanted it became increasingly difficult. So one of the one of the last days that I really spent a whole lot of money was I walked into Whole Foods. I was getting just enough food for us for the week. And when I checked out, it rang up to over $400. And to me, that was like that was the day it clicked. I was like, I I can't do this. I cannot continue shopping for eight people on the butt. I mean, you know, we live okay. It's not that we're, you know, financially strapped or anything, but a $400 one-week grocery bill was major sticker shock for me. And I, you know, I already knew already, I already knew that I knew how to preserve food. I'd done it in my early 20s, did it when I was growing up with my grandparents, did it in the summers with my mother, and but I'd gotten away from all that. Like I wanted away from that lifestyle. And some of those childhood experiences started kind of welling back up in my mind. I started thinking about it. And I decided I was gonna take control of it. I was gonna take control of at least a portion of what we were going to eat. And if I wanted food that I could trust, maybe I just needed to grow it myself. So we were living in Sheffield Subdivision in Bellevue, a suburb outside of Nashville. We had about an acre, or not an acre, an eighth of an acre lot. And, you know, it was it was really nice. I loved that subdivision. We went to church with a lot of people that we lived around. We loved our neighbors. There was a lot of good folks in that neighborhood, especially the street behind us. We were great friends with them. They'd always have block parties, you know, and I and that was it was a great area to live in. And I knew, and at the time, selling our house was not a thing, not even on our radar. But I looked at that little backyard within the privacy fence with these beautiful willow tree kind of hanging over the fence. There was

Building A Hidden HOA Backyard Garden

SPEAKER_01 7:55

the backyard was really shaded. And there was also a couple of hackberries like smack dab in the middle of the backyard and kind of over to the right of the backyard and over to the left of the backyard. There were huge trees. So we decided, well, one of them kind of started getting rotten. So we decided we were going to take out those trees. So the tree guys came and they took out about four of these big, huge hackberries. And as they were taking down these limbs, I started seeing sun come through. Just a little more sun, a little more sun, a little more sun. By the time they were finished, I realized that my backyard was big enough and had plenty of sun to grow some stuff. And so, and keep in mind, I'm in an hoa now. So everything within my four wall or within my the walls of my privacy fence, I tried to keep super low so that only the people with two stories that lived like right around me could look in and see what was going on in my backyard. And luckily I had great neighbors, great neighbors behind me, great neighbors next to me that could see in my backyard. And I started, I'll tell you the story of that later, how I how I handled that. But I ended up putting in a compost bin. T had already started a little compost area, sort of in the corner where he would throw our scraps and whatever, and that started becoming really pretty good dirt. So we bought one of those big tumblers, and so we started making compost. And the back area where there was some shrubs and stuff up against the house underneath the window, we took out what we could and left, you know, one or two ornamental things. And in that flower bed, we put blueberry bushes. And then growing along the fence, we planted grapes. And then next to the house, on the outside of the fence, because it was a tree, nobody cared, we planted a plum tree. And then we had a little friend of ours come and fence in with like a low, really cute garden fence coming off of the back privacy fence. A just a little low garden fence with a little walkthrough gate because we had dogs and we didn't want the if I decided to do something in there, I didn't want the dogs to be able to get in there and mess up whatever I was gonna plant. Well, once I had that, I thought this would be a really good place for some raised beds. And I take that back. We had actually put down one or two raised beds just uh made out of wood before we ever did that fence. So I apologize. That's chronologically not exactly correct. But once I had the first two and knew that the dogs would probably be a problem, we decided to do the bigger fence. Well, then once I had the bigger fence, I could put garden beds up against that on the house side and up against the fence on the privacy fence side. So that started with one or two beds and then ended up with I think I had eight four by eight beds, maybe, and four two by eight beds that were right up against the front, you know, smaller, more narrow beds. And that summer, now keeping in granted, I did source things like corn, purple hole peas from like my aunt and my mother because they still grew big gardens. So I had them plant enough to have some extra for me. And my aunt always grew, my Aunt Joy always grew pizzas and cream corn and silver queen corn because my cousin Jackie loves silver queen. So she always made sure that us girls, there was enough that if we wanted to put it up, we could. So 700, those 750 jars, some of them came from my Aunt Joy's house and some of them came from my mama's house. But a lot of what I canned that summer came from my own backyard. I got

Raised Beds And 80 Jars Of Pickles

SPEAKER_01 12:10

out of one little four by eight raised bed with like a little garden or like a little trellis, cucumber trellis, I canned 80-something jars of pickles from that one bed. I just kept picking and kept picking and kept picking, and they kept producing and kept producing, and I'd put them in little produce bags, the little green produce bags, until I got enough to make a batch, and then I would can six or seven jars. And the next three or four or five days, I'd do it again, and then I'd can five or six jars. And before I knew it, I had lots and lots and lots of jars of homemade pickles, which is something that my husband absolutely loves. Some of the other things that we had back there in that backyard was we had herbs and pots growing everywhere. I had planted a rosemary plant inside that little fenced-in area. And it grew really well in there and it kept coming back every year. It didn't die off. So I enjoyed being able to just walk out on the deck. You know, we had it along the railings as well. So whenever I was cooking something, if I wanted some time or I wanted some basil, I just walked out to the back deck. And that's something that anybody can do, whether you're in an apartment or you're in a house or you're on a farm. Plants and herbs in a pot are just one of those just amazing little things that you can do to make a difference. And it's so nice to be able to cook with fresh herbs when you want it. It was beautiful, it was peaceful. We had a fire pit back there. We would sit around the fire pit and break beans or shell peas. Friday nights, that was our date night. If my Aunt Joy or my mama had stuff ready to go, as soon as I got off work on Friday from the courthouse, I would head straight to Camden or New Johnsonville, and they would have stuff ready for me in a garbage bag. I would haul it back, and then we would get started on whatever we were doing. We would sit out there and listen to music and listen to the neighbors, you know, doing their little parties or whatever they were doing. And we would just sit and talk and break beans and shell peas. And that was it was really relaxing. I enjoyed it. It wasn't overwhelming, and I was able to do it as I could do it. And I always thought that I wanted my own big garden so that I wasn't dependent on somebody else. Like I didn't want to be dependent on my Aunt Joy. Didn't want to be dependent on my mother. And of course, my mother got to where she physically couldn't do it anyway. And, you know, my Aunt Joy, she's getting older too, and she's getting to that point too where she doesn't want to do a big garden anymore. So when we bought the farm, we had this nice spot that we planned on doing a big amount in, and we kind of have. And that's more T's thing because I've learned that I don't love big gardens. I love raised bed gardens. And so that's where my attention goes is my raised beds that I have up in my kitchen garden. And tea tends to the big garden. But I have found that you do not need a farm to grow a surprising amount of food. Again, let me repeat that. I canned 80 jars of pickles from one four by eight raised bed.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

One four by eight raised bed. There is a lot that you can do in a very small space. Looking back on what my days looked like back then, gosh, it was it was a lot.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Like I would get up first thing in the morning, get ready for work. I would go out in my dress with my dress sandals or dress shoes or whatever on, and I would water the garden before work, because I like to water in the mornings. I would kind of look over my plants, inspect them, see kind of what's going on, if there was anything ready to harvest, I would go ahead and pick, you know, what I needed to pick, or I would mainly make a note that I needed to get it that evening. And then as soon as I got home from work,

Workdays Then Late Night Canning

SPEAKER_01 16:45

I would change clothes, run straight out to the garden. I would weed if I needed to, I would harvest if I needed to, and then I would put the produce in the uh refrigerator or however I was going to store it until I was ready to can it. And so I would save enough of the produce until it, you know, until I had enough accumulated. And then whether it was the evening after work or weekends, you know, sometimes I would run that canner late into the night. I'd fall asleep sometimes when I got to the last batch, waiting for the pressure to drop. Hear that pop, you know, or the drop of the pressure thing. And some point in the night, I would get up off the couch and I would move from the couch to the bed. And then first thing I would do the next morning before I went to work, before I went out to water the garden, was I would check the seals, kind of see if everything's sealed overnight. And then on the weekends, I would either buy larger quantities from farmers if I needed to, or get it from my aunt or my mom. And again, those things were like green beans, peas, and corns, things that you would typically get from a row garden. And you can grow green beans and lots of them in a raised bed. But I didn't have that, was not what I was using my beds for. And, you know, I talked about my my date nights with tea, but you know, that was a hard season of my life, kind of getting all that done and doing as much as I did. It was exhausting, but it was also one of the sweetest seasons of my life. Like it's when I'm I'm gonna cry.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

When I'm like 80 years old, I think those are gonna be the moments that I look back on with a smile on my face.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Because I truly enjoyed every minute that T and I sent or spent out there just dreaming about having a farm someday, talking about all the things that we could can and grow and do. And he's so sweet. He he does whatever I want to do, like any dream, any crazy harebrain idea that I have, he's always along for the ride. He is my ride or die. And that sort of relationship does make for absolutely wonderful memories. Of course, I would do the same for him. If he came to me with something that he really wanted or really dreamed about doing, I would do whatever I needed to do to make it happen. And I enjoyed that. Like I enjoyed those nights. But all that being said, the real reason that I did it was not about having 750 jars at the end of the season or standing back and looking at, you know, look what I did. I'm not a quitter and I don't like to waste food. And I wanted to protect my investment. So that was part of why, you know, we put put up what we were growing, because I don't want to throw away food. But I also wanted the best food that I could possibly produce for my family. But even deeper than that was the connection that I felt. I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing because growing

Why Preserving Felt Like Coming Home

SPEAKER_01 20:15

up, I saw my grandparents, and I've and I've always talked about this, but it's so part of who I am that I can't not continue to bring it up. But I my Mima and people, they always preserve food for the winter every single summer that I can remember. They did it, my aunts did it, my great-grandmother did it, my Mima's sisters did it, my grandparents on the other side did it, but my main connection was with my Mima because I spent so much time with with her.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Um and somewhere along the way I sort of realized that I was doing what they did. And I felt such a deep connection.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

And it's it's one of those really weird things. You know, they talk about genetic memories and all that sort of stuff, and you don't really it it sounds kind of woo-woo, but for me, like I truly believe I have a genetic connection to living that sort of lifestyle. And there was a light switch that came on inside of me once I felt that connection, and I have never turned back. I can't. It's too much a part of who I am, and that moment still influences my life, you know, here 20 years after the fact, after I decided that that was the road that I was going to go down. I will say though, that there are some things that 51 year old Dawn knows that 35 year old Dawn did not know, and not. I'm not saying I don't regret any of it. I not one single minute of it, but there's a lot of things that had I known or if I had the experience back then that I have now, that I would probably change. And one of those things is I would do smaller batches. Like I thought that I had to spend, you know, 10, 12

What I Would Do Differently Now

SPEAKER_01 22:25

hours a day doing these huge batches because that's what I saw growing up. Like all the corn would come in and everybody would do it. But of course, there was help. There was great grandmother, there was grandmother, there was aunts and uncles and my mother and cousins, and you know, there was a lot of hands that I didn't have. But I tried to do it all, and I tried to do it all by myself. Well, with T's help and sometimes Chase, but Chase was little. As he got older, he started kind of helping a little bit. I would do probably do my batches more frequent instead of trying to do them in these huge batches, you know, every two to three weeks. Like I had this calendar, and May is strawberry month, then June is pickle month, then July is peas and green beans month, and then August is corn month. And you know, I would just try to do and do and do, and I even I even would save my vacation days because Metro, you know, the longer you've been there, the the more vacation days that you get. So literally seven or eight of my vacation days for the year were scheduled for canning days. And I would try to time those to when I thought the harvest was going to come in, or I would save them and I would say, Hey, I'm gonna have to be off next week. I'm going to get corn and I'm gonna preserve corn from Friday to Monday or from Friday to Sunday, and that's what I would do. And I would probably wait less for the giant harvests. You know, I would just try to to keep it going, you know, a little at a time. And I even catch myself doing that now. Like I buy Bradley tomatoes because they all come in at once, and I can can them all at once. So I still have a tendency to think like that, even though I know it's probably not the easiest way to do it. But if you, you know, if you have lots of hands and you have lots of help, getting it all done in a weekend is also, or two weekends is also a great way to go. It's just the older you get, the harder that is to do. And I think there are probably better systems than what has always been done and what the old folks always did. I have an electric pressure canner now that I really like that I can do, I think it's five quart jars. And that's great for small batches.

Electric Canners And Freeze Drying

SPEAKER_01 24:55

And the cool thing about it is I don't have to babysit it. I also have a freeze dryer now, so that it lends itself to a whole nother method of preserving, you know, that's not quite as hard and time consuming as pressure canning. And the stuff is also much lighter when it's finished, so it takes up a lot less space and you know, and it lasts for 25 years once you get it done. So I do love having the freeze dryer. Still, though, I end up, even though I always think I'm gonna run some more stuff through the freeze dryer, you know, I only have one and it's an extra large. So what I still end up doing is I freeze-dry the things that don't preserve well in any other method. So I freeze-dry milk, I freeze-dry my herbs because I love the way freeze-dried herbs uh preserve. They just they're still so pretty. They retain their color, they retain their flavor, they retain their smell. I love freeze-drying herbs. I freeze-dry my eggs when I have extra or in abundance, because there's no other really good method, in my opinion, for preserving eggs. I've I've tried doing them in the lime, and that does okay. I mean, they they'll hold for about a year like that, but then if I don't use them in a year, then it's something else I've got to clean out and wash the jar and start all over again. So I've found that I just don't like doing that. I like freeze-drying them a lot better. And for me, the goal is not less food. I still need lots and lots and lots of food, and I still, you know, I'm preserving for not only myself, but now my children and my grandchildren. But the goal is sustainability. I'm not getting any younger. And I've got to think in systems that are for, you know, 50-year-old me

Systems Over Heroic Marathon Weekends

SPEAKER_01 26:55

and not 30-year-old me. So a lot of the things that I'm doing here on the homestead now, I want to set it up to where I can milk cows when I'm older. I can have a garden when I'm older. Our goal is to eventually have 20 raised beds so that no matter what happens in the row garden, I have a backup. I have things up here and it's really right close to the house. It's right off the deck. It's super convenient, super easy to water. I just I love having that kitchen garden and it's going to grow. So I'm gonna keep working on that. My new philosophy is more instead of trying to put forth this heroic effort, which has always been like, I don't know, I like to do things that I can step back and say I'm proud of. Like, I am a woman, hear me roar, look at what I did, you know, and that makes me feel good. But I want to do less marathon weekends, less staying up till three in the morning, because I can't do like I just can't. I cannot do that anymore because now I have cows to milk. I didn't have cows to milk back then. I just had to get up and go to work, which was not terribly physically demanding, where the farm work is requires a whole lot more of my energy level. I think in rhythms now, I think in systems, I try to make things work together, I try to make things easier. And I think in terms of consistency, and I have to write it down, it has to go on my to-do list, it has to be on the calendar. Otherwise, I absolutely know that I will not do it. And if it becomes tedious or really a lot of trouble, or it's out of sight, out of mind, I won't do it. I just will not do it. Probably what I would prefer to do is more like seven quarts three times a week, you know, something like that, or six quarts, run it through my electric canner, get out my big canner when I want to, or when girlfriends want to come over and help, because I do have that, and I love for people to come and help me preserve, and I will send you home with food. Um, that is my my payment for that. I think probably the just kind

Natural Living Is Not All Or Nothing

SPEAKER_01 29:20

of thinking over all of this, the biggest misconception about natural living is that it has to be like all or nothing, and that you have to do everything yourself and you have to produce all your food, which is great if you can. You know, I'm a prepared-minded person, so I try to do as much as I can. But you know, the reality is that some years you don't garden. You just don't. Last year I did not have a garden. We started out really well, we were gonna do it. We when we had some cleanup we had to do, pulling up old weed barrier, and you know, the weeds had grown really tall, and we started it and we were gonna get it done, and then this life happened and we never finished it. So we did not have a garden last year. You know, some years you just buy from farmers. That's how I started out. I started out getting stuff from my mom and my aunt, and what I couldn't get from them, or if I needed something right that minute, I would go to either McNeil's produce in Bellevue, or I would go to the other little produce market. I can't remember, it was something in Suns. Couldn't remember what, but they were super organic and really, really good quality stuff. Um also in Bellevue, and or I would drive around, see if I could find some trucks, people selling stuff off the back of their trucks. But at the same time, I was looking for stuff that hadn't been sprayed. I don't want glyphosate in my food if I can help it. But some years you may preserve super heavy, and that's okay because that stuff will last. Like I'm still eating on purple hole peas that I preserved four years ago, maybe, and they're still fine. There's nothing wrong with them. They just start to lose a little bit of their nutrient density after the first year, but there's nothing wrong with them. They're just not as nutritious as they were the first year that you canned them, but you can still use them. So if you don't get your garden done, you can still use it. You can support local farmers like me, like other people that that do produce. I don't typically have enough to sell of my own produce, but there are so many farmers out there that are doing it regeneratively and doing it the right way, and that is their their livelihood. Find those people, support them, give them your money. You can and it is a lot of times you can check with them and they have seconds and you can buy in bulk. Like you could get a whole box of green beans and take them home and preserve them however you like, whether you like freezing them or pressure canning them or however you like to preserve them. But you don't get extra points for making life harder than it needs to be. And man, I've had to learn that the hard way. Because again, I like saying, I did this. Look how I, you know, I walked to school uphill

Buy From Farmers And Skip The Struggle

SPEAKER_01 32:15

both ways. It's the way, you know, the country folk tend to be sometimes. But it doesn't make your life any better. So I am really trying to make things as easy as possible, whether that's putting in irrigation systems on a timer with the Wi-Fi. I am all about some technology, y'all. If it can make my life easier and I can still get the same end result, I'm going to do it. I don't care how they did it 50 years ago. As long as I'm still getting the same quality of food, the same nutrient density, the same, you know, chemical-free stuff going into my pantry. If I need to run Wi-Fi to do it, I'm going to. And that is one of the things you really need to think about is what systems can you put in place so that you don't have to put in as much time, as much maintenance, as much back breaking labor to have a tomato. To cook, to grow, just grow your slicers. Where you can go out and grab a tomato when you're ready to throw it on a hamburger or a BLT. So just in closing, just I really want to tie this all together and and bring it back to I started this journey because I wanted food that I could trust. I thought the answer was doing everything myself. Twenty years later, I've learned something just a little bit different. When I've looked up back over my time and really thought about it and really molded over and reflected on it. Food that you can trust is out there. Like there's people. You can there's people that you can trust. You just have to know who they are and you have to have conversations. You don't need a farm. You don't need 750 jars. But that they man, they were pretty. They were so, so pretty.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

You don't need a garden.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Maybe it's just, I don't know, a pot of tomatoes. Maybe it's just, like I said, some herbs on a windowsill or on your deck railing. They make deck railing planters where you can just walk out and snip it right off your deck rail. Maybe it's buying milk from a local dairy like me.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Maybe it is just having a little compost pile.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

The point is just to take one step toward food that you

One Step Toward Food You Trust

SPEAKER_01 34:55

trust. So I'd like to know, like, I'm trying to get people to engage with me a little bit more, maybe message me, make a comment, leave comments on my Facebook, whatever. But I'd like to know, like, what was your first step into natural living? Like, was it a garden? Did you can something? Did you make a loaf of sourdough bread? Because I know, like, in COVID, everybody was making sourdough bread. So, did you do that? I would love to hear your story. I would love to know where you are in this journey. And I invite anybody to send me an email at infotegoramhomestead.com. Leave a comment. You know, you can do podcast responses.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

I just kind of know want to know, like, for the people who are listening, if this is helping you at all, where you are and where you would like to go in your journey.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

And the the photos, I'm sort of thinking about this. The photos that I posted earlier in the week, just to kind of tie this all back together, before kind of going back and looking at that, the story was look how much food I preserved. Like that was that was the storyline of that post or that picture back years and years ago, you know, when I had posted it. But after reflecting on it, the story for me kind of becomes this is where the Gorham Homestead started. This is where we really started.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

The willow tree, the raised beds, the herbs, the pantry. And that's the story.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

So with that, I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. I hope that it motivates you to do just one more thing. If you're already doing some things, just add one more

Your First Step And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 37:00

thing. But it does, or find someone that you can buy that one more thing from. And just get started. Just just do it. And whatever that you're doing today, oh, before I go, I want to say to my grandbabies, I love you. I love you bunches and bunches. I hope that you listen to this someday. And I hope you love me like I love my Mima. And with that, I hope that whatever you have on the docket today, folks. I hope you remember. You just gotta keep it real. Thanks, y'all. See you next time.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

My daddy was a topic, playing off local club. And my mama was a bit with a baby.