Canning Green Beans

First off, I would like to apologize for being over a week late to submit this blog. I have been super busy this past week, but am not going to share everything that I have been working on with you, because I would like to save that for my next blog posting. Currently, I have just finished up my 7^th week of my internship, but this post is for weeks 5-6.

The week of June 17^th-21^st, there wasn’t an awful lot going on. Wednesday, June 19^th, I went to the public library and read to some of the kids as part of the Summer Reading Program. The topic of the program this year is “Dig into Reading”. I fed off of that in order to teach the children about vegetables. I read them a book about gardening and I took stuffed animals that were shaped like vegetables and asked them what kind of vegetable each one was. I also took some fresh vegetables for them to look at and taste. I was surprised that the children were able to identify all of the vegetables that I brought except for the radishes. They even knew what an eggplant was! The children got to try spinach and carrot chips. All of the children except for one tried them. One little boy loved the spinach and was chomping on it like a rabbit. Another boy loved carrots and said that he would eat the whole bag if we would let him. I had someone take a few pictures for me, but unfortunately I haven’t gotten those yet to share with you.

On Thursday, June 20^th, I tried my hand at creating a Homemakers Newsletter for the first time.  It took me a long time to get all of the information in that needed to be printed, but I would have to say that I enjoyed putting it all together and adding clipart to brighten it up. Thursday evening I went to a local church and taught about 30 adults, teens and children how to make paper flowers. The night was hectic, but everyone was very nice and I even recognized a few children from the program we had at the library the day before.  We were all having such a good time that I ended up staying there an hour after the program had ended, and was not allowed to leave until I had taken a plate of food with me (the cook was adamant about us not leaving hungry!).

Monday, June 24^th was a busy day for me. My supervisor was on annual leave, so I was responsible for gathering all of the canning supplies for our pressure canning class the next day. For this class, we are canning green beans. A local farmer from the community brought some green beans for us to can. I volunteered to break the beans, which may not have been the best idea! Haha…I worked on those beans for three hours before I finished. Once I was done, I had six gallon bags full of beans. After that, we loaded all of the canning supplies and green beans into the car and took them to Boyle County so that they would be ready for our program the next day. When I got home, my dad had been canning green beans all day and he still had more left to string and break, but I refused. I was so tired of beans!

All of the beans that I broke & washed.

Alethea Price and Rita Stewart talking about pressure canning.

Our pressure canning workshop was held at the Boyle County Extension Office on June 25^th. Rita Stewart (my internship supervisor) and I partnered with Alethea Price, the FCS agent from Boyle County. While Rita and Alethea talked about canning, I was in the kitchen washing the beans. Once everyone started canning, I walked around and helped keep everything running smoothly and then we cleaned up and it was time to go home.  

          Thursday, June 27^th was a day full of meetings. In the morning was the Area Annual Meeting Planning Meeting. During this meeting, we talked about decorations, entertainment and food for the upcoming meeting in October. The Council Meeting was at noon and then that evening was the Camper Orientation Meeting. This is where all of the children who are going to 4-H camp in Lincoln County met to discuss what they need to bring and to talk a little bit about what camp would be like for all the new campers. The children had to have a head lice check and I think there were health screenings going on as well. This meeting was beneficial for me since I have never been to camp before and didn’t know what to expect.

On Friday, June 28^th, I went to the Senior Citizens Center. I spent the morning making Bacon & Tomato Dip to take to them. I was expecting about 40 people, so I doubled the recipe in order to make enough for everyone to have a taste. That took me a couple hours to make everything and then clean up afterwards. Then I made copies of the handouts and packed up everything that I needed to take. I divided the dip into individual serving cups and passed it out with some whole grain crackers. I talked to the seniors about vegetables, focusing mainly on tomatoes (I talked about lycopene, vitamin A, etc…).  

That’s about it for weeks 5-6. Stay tuned for my next blog posting, where I will be talked about my experiences at the Lincoln County Fair and going to 4-H camp for the first time (I leave tomorrow!). Wish me luck!