How about a blast from the past -- 90 years ago i.e., March 16, 1933, newspaper grocery store ad -- beef roasts 6¢ per pound. Imagine 10 pounds of beef roast for 60¢.
A friend of mine who was a quilter remembers drooling over the "inexpensive " fabric her Depression era grandmother told her about... cotton calico for a dime a yard. She exclaimed how she would have bought so many yards... until her grandmother said, sadly, "you don't understand... we didn't have a dime!"
On the "tons of tomatoes all at once"... first, 75 plants for a couple is insane! Even though ours did poorly last year, we got over 8 bushels from 18 plants. Even I we wanted spaghetti 3x a week, we'd never use the fruit from 75 plants!
Plant fewer plants, and as they ripen, freeze them. We remove the stem and quarter them, and put them into ziploc bags. When we get a couple bushels (8 gallons is a bushel), we thaw them, drain off the water, then run the fruit through the Squeezo strainer. It cuts down on cooking by about 80% ( the sauce/puree starts out like a medium thick marinara), which gives a much fresher tasting canned product.
This let's us concentrate the work of pureeing and canning all in a couple of days, but you could also just thaw a few bags at a time and work in small batches, if that suits your strength and energy levels better.
This also let's you combine different types and varieties, which often ripen at different times. We love putting the big Pantano Romanesco beefsteak tomatoes in with the paste types... huge flavor boost. But they often ripen later than the paste types. By freezing them all, I can use whatever ratios or combination I want.
Summerthyme
