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Preserving food is much more than just canning. It includes freezing, dehydrating, pickling, root cellaring, and more. Anything that you can do to store food for your family counts as preserving! That is what this challenge is about. Preserving food! Now that I have settled that, let’s get on with the 2020 Put “em Up Challenge. Sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page to get your FREE Put ’em Up Challenge Tracking Sheet, Planning Pages, and End of Year Congratulations page sent right to your inbox.

There are few things in life more rewarding than planting a garden. After several months of hard work and dedication, if all goes well, you will receive a bountiful harvest. The question then becomes, “What to do with all this food?”  Growing produce is only half of the battle. Next, you need to preserve your harvest in order not to waste it all.

Or maybe you are looking to save money at the grocery store by buying in bulk and preserving it yourself. Do you want to have control of the ingredients and quality of the food you eat? That is another great reason to preserve your own food. You may also want to learn a new skill, become more self-sustaining, make unique gifts for friends or family, or just fill your freezer/pantry with your own food. Whatever your reason may be, the Put’ em Up Challenge will help encourage you in your preserving journey!

The Put ’em Up Challenge Printables are a great resource to help you focus on what you and your family actually eat, recipes you want to try, and help encourage you to continue to fill your pantry and freezer with quality food!

How the Put ’em Up Challenge Started

When my husband and I first started to can, we had a lot of fun learning this skill. We picked up a few good canning books and tried to can everything we grew. One of our favorite books starting out was Put ’em Up by Sherri Brooks Vinton. It inspired us to preserve as much as we could and to try new recipes. In her book, storing food is referred to as “putting it up”. This was a new term for us since we born and raised in the north. But, we liked the term and her book.

When we got the hang of canning, we started a little competition amongst ourselves. I created a tally sheet for us to track our canning and preserving. I titled it the “Put ’em up Challenge.” We would put the date, recipe canned, item preserved, how much we made, and who made it. Most of the time it was both of us. But, it was fun to add up our tally and say what we preserved on our own. Most of all, it was just fun to have a huge end of year number! The friendly competition motivated us to can more than we ever had before. The first year we did this was the first year we canned enough jelly and jam, so we didn’t have to buy any from the store! That in itself was so rewarding. In fact, we still have a copy of our first canning competition floating around somewhere in this house. It’s fun to look back and see how far we have come.

Our 2019 Preserving Totals

I would definitely say that we had a successful year of preserving in 2019. I shared all about it and TONS OF TIPS in Preserving Totals: Canning Tips & Top 10 Pantry Staples.  Some of our successes included falling in love with canned meat, finding a salsa recipe we all love, filling our freezer with our amazing celery harvest, and becoming more proficient in small-batch canning. You will want to check that article out!

In 2019 we preserved 154 and a 1/2 pints, 51 quarts, and 50 frozen items. Making our 2019 Total to be 306 preserved items! Yay! That is a lot of food that we were able to make on our own and we did not have to buy from the store.

Join the Put ’em Up Challenge Today

We’ve had so much fun tracking our preserving the last few years that we wanted to share the tracking sheets and panning pages with  EVERYONE!

I created this 9 page Put ’em Up Challenge Packet to share with you. And best of all, it’s FREE! Subscribe to our e-mail list at the end of this post and we’ll send these reproducible pages, right to your inbox. It includes a 2020 Tracking Sheet, 3 planning pages (garden, recipes tried, and equipment needed), a blank ideas page for you, and my personal favorite a “Congratulations I completed…” page. This year I also created a Brand-New Sustainabily Sheet to help you know how long your canned items are lasting you throughout the year. They are a great resource to help you focus on what you and your family eat, recipes you want to try, and plan out your garden accordingly.

What are you waiting for? Subscribe now to get started. If you are participating, I would love it if you would share your excitement and successes with us. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Tag @lifeonmistyacres in your post’s and use #putemupchallenge. I don’t want to miss out on any of the fun!

I hope you enjoy the Put ’em Up Challenge as much as we have. Tell me, what are some of your preserving challenges or interests?

Not sure how to get started? Here are a few of our favorite recipes: Strawberry Jam, Orange Marmalade, and Perfect Pesto. You may also like to read Canning… the Great Mystery and Quickstart Guide to Canning.

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-Lindsay from Life on Misty Acres

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