(No) Time For Canning

When I was eight, I held a position of honor in my family, particularly in the late summer. My hands were just small enough to shove a tomato all the way through the top of a regular-mouth canning jar. "Can Jenifer come down and help me can tomatoes?" my grandmother would call up and ask. I felt honored by this special position for about one season. After that, whenever I was "invited" to come canning I would wryly remark, "Yeah, my hands are small, I know."

I spent untold summer hours as a child at our kitchen table, a cake pan full of tomatoes and rows of empty jars in front of me. My much older brother and Dad served peeling duty as well, while my mother blanched old pillowcases full of tomatoes to remove their skins. Mom would regularly dump our tomato skins in the compost bucket and return full pans of steaming-hot tomatoes to be peeled. My hands would wrinkle and bleach clean from the acidity, except for my fingernails which had slivers of reddish black gunk under them. So why is it I look back on those days with such fondness? It must have been the family togetherness, the silliness we all shared, especially when a juicy tomato would squirt someone else in the face or a tomato would pop out of its skin onto the floor. It was a difficult job, but working together made it go more quickly.

Last night, I canned this year's first batch of tomatoes...alone. The kids are certainly old enough to help, but I tend to can late at night, when boiling a pot of water for hours on end doesn't make my non-air conditioned house totally unbearable. In 2006, I had such a bumper crop that I didn't can any tomatoes the following year. Now, my shelf is nearly bare and I'm longing to fill it with rows of bright, beautiful tomatoes. I didn't finish until midnight, and I'm feeling drained today. My mother used to put in batch after batch until well into the early morning, setting the timer and waking up every 45 minutes to take out the hot jars and put new ones in. No doubt about it, canning is hard work and you have to keep your mind on the reward that come from opening a jar in winter and eating a tomato that tastes almost as good a fresh one in August.

There was a time not so long ago, when everyone was busy canning this time of year. As committed as I am to growing and putting up my own food, though, I find it difficult to find the time. It was nearly dark two nights ago, when my Amish neighbor stopped by and said hello. I was digging the last few potato plants up, and she was carrying a basket with 15 bags of corn for the freezer. She looked a bit tired too. "It's a busy time of year," she said, smiling sympathetically. Leaning on my garden fork, I nodded in agreement, then related what I had put up so far this year, and talked about my crop successes and failures. It felt good to share with her, like it always does with my mother, because I know she understands that the work brings great rewards. "Don't work too hard," she said in parting. "I won't," I fibbed.

Nothing can compare to the feeling you get when that first very cool, crisp autumn day comes and you know you have a full freezer and shelves full of canned goods. I imagine I might be cooking up some applesauce, and decide to pull out a bag of June strawberries to sweeten the sauce. Or I might thaw some peaches for a cobbler to go with the beef roast simmering in a pot with onion and carrots from the basement and a jar of tomatoes from the pantry. After dinner, we might bundle up to take a short hike down to the river or start a bonfire in the backyard, our bellies full.

On late summer days, if I've spent several hours on my feet at the kitchen counter, I fall into bed exhausted, with back and legs aching and a feeling of great satisfaction. I've always been known as a planner, someone who looks ahead, prepares or perhaps over-prepares. I wonder if it has something to do with my rural upbringing, and learning to live each day connected to the growing season. Or,is it just me? Either way, I know that all the time I've invested since I first placed that seed order in February is finally coming to fruition, and I'd better find the time to preserve it now so I have something to show for my labors.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde