BY REBECCA FRENCH SMITH

Every good home canner knows timing is important at several stages in preserving food. There are set cook times, water bath times and pressure cooking times that must be adhered to if you hope to be eating that food several months from now.

Sunday afternoon I spent seven hours at a friend’s house putting up salsa and tomatoes. That’s only a couple of items for my winter pantry. Putting up food is hard work, which makes me thankful for the farmers who are harvesting, in the middle of calving season or already planning for the spring right now.

On Saturday prior to the canning fest, I had the pleasure of taking a few blogging and media guests to visit several Missouri farms — dairy, beef cattle and row crop — to learn how those farmers grow and raise food. It’s always fun to share our agriculture story with someone who is not familiar with how modern farming and ranching is accomplished. Today’s farmers and ranchers truly are high tech and environmentally conscious.

The most interesting stops involved technology — like the equipment shed — where everyone had something in common. Tablets. Computers. GPS. Heck, every person on the tour had a smartphone in his or her pocket. This connection lays the groundwork for them to understand the role the tools of precision agriculture play in growing food and keeping it safe and grown and raised responsibly.

The timing of these fall tours is a challenge as it is a particularly busy time for farmers. As harvest windows can be short or random or both, farmers understand timing. Good years have their challenges just as bad years do, and with one of the largest harvests on record expected, farmers are racing to get their crops in and stored. As usual, Mother Nature is not playing nice. Heavy rain has kept combines in the shed and not in the field where they need to be. But by most accounts, it will be a decent harvest this year. Grain bins are nearly full to overflowing and farmers are still in the fields.

My friend’s kitchen looked very similar, except overflowing with salsa and stewed tomatoes. A plentiful vegetable harvest meant lots of tomatoes and peppers that needed to be preserved and not wasted. With canning and harvest, as with most things, timing is everything.

Rebecca French Smith, of Columbia, Mo., is a multimedia specialist for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.