I do between 200 and 300. Usually 150 to 200 jars of various tomato products and another 100 of other stuff (mostly fruit in syrup and applesauce, a few jams, jellies, spreads, other sauces, chutneys, etc.) Though that sounds like a lot more than it is because I do almost all small jars: pints and half-pints and, for jams and even pizza sauce, little half-cup jars. It's just DH and I in the household, and I find if I can in bigger jars some of it sometimes goes to waste as we open a jar and then don't get to finishing it, and I HATE seeing my home canning go to waste! So I gave up on quart jars, do only a few three-cup jars of salsa and fruit for when guests come, and otherwise on the rare occasions we need more at a time I just open two jars. Costs a few cents more in lids but works better for me. Thanks to a tip from a fellow Canadian harvest forummer and my clever hubby's searching, we found a dollar store in a town nearby that has lids for $1.25 a dozen, which works out to slightly cheaper still than the bulk ones I've seen online, so I stockpile those. Z, also turned into a canning maniac thanks to GW! it started with those tomato forummers, who made me from a casual gardener into practically an heirloom tomato farmer.... then I needed to preserve all those tomatoes, and, well....

Yes. THANK YOU!! Its people like you that take that tiny bit of extra effort to actaully find all the 'gems' here, that restore my faith in this forum. To just grab some text from posts, you can also use keyboard commands. Pressing control and the letter 'C' copies text you highlight into a hidden clipboard. Then you can paste the text into a program like Word Pad or other text reader. The PASTE function is done by pressing the control and 'V' key. Highlighting text is easy to do. Place the mouse pointer at the beginning of the intended text, while holding the left mouse button, you move down the text on the page which highlights it what you want to copy. After that, the control C is used to copy, and control V is used to paste elsewhere. My red pepper spread used balsamic vinegar, as well as roasted onions and roasted garlic. All were done on a gas grill with mesquite to add a bit of smokey taste.

I'm going to be wishy-washy. I also have thought that a FAQ would be great. But then I've thought - what would be any different about a FAQ than what's found in my BBB? I think the answer to that question comes down to exactly what Kay said, it's the subleties in the questions. People (usually) ask a question because they think that the answers found in BBB do not, for some reason, apply to the particular situation in question. Does that make sense? So I would be inclined to think the same would happen with a FAQ. If a person reads it (and that can be a big if), they will think that their specific question is not answered, so they will go ahead and ask. On the other hand, I would love love love an easily accessible compendium of tried and true recipes. I have often found myself wanting to do something new and thinking "hmmm, I know I saw that discussed a year or so ago, let's see if I can find it". Sometimes I can find it, sometimes not. Finally, I wholeheartedly agree with Kay and jt - those of you who answer the same questions (or variations of) over and over and over are awesome. Your patience and kindness, not to mention your knowledge, are wonderful and make this my favorite forum. Ann

Hey Tina, The nick name is from an old folk song: "There's a frog on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea" I'm not an experienced worm wrangler like the other counterparts here so take my advice as such. The bedding breaks down to a mixture of rich humus and worm castings. The organisms take a while to break it down even further to that ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio. As long as the foodstock is buried an inch to two inches deep in that bedding you'll be okay. Some systems or methods do a layering where new bedding is put on top of the foodstock and the vermicompost is harvested on the bottom. You might want to search the forum for top feeding versus pocket feeding. Yeah the BSF adults I had are about the size of a large horsefly 1 to 2 inches. I don't know if they get larger. The BSF can't fly that well so they would land on my arm or my shirt. I guess when they saw the bright light they would fly and then they saw me as a landing pad. For a while there it was one or two every evening I opened it. There haven't been any the past couple of weeks. As far as splitting the worm bin. It really is a preference. It also depends on what you want to do, i.e, do you vermicompost for the byproduct or do you do it to recycle food waste, or a little of both? From what I've read here from other experienced people and from other resources, the worms will adjust their population (biomass) to match their living space. If the space is large they will increase the population and vice versa. I split them to get the population to a point where they better match my waste average and to get a good soil amendment. Others may split the bin to share some of their worms with neighbors or for a workshop they plan on doing. Even though I'm splitting the bin, I probably will still have to put some of the foodstock in the lasagna bed when it gets cold and the worm activity slows down. It's still in the 80's here so I have a while. Good luck with your harvest. Let us all know how it goes. Charles