(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

Pork and Peaches

It felt like another adventure last Thursday as the kids and I set out in our truck for Conowingo, 45 minutes plus away at the far end of Cecil County, almost to the Pennsylvania line. I was off to pick up four large boxes of pork products from a locally-produced pig, which our family and three others had decided to share. We have purchased local beef several times before, and our most recent grass-fed meat from Rumbleway Farm had been the best yet. We don't eat quite as much pork, but the thought of some local scrapple, bacon and sausage was too tempting to pass up. My favorite quote about scrapple is on my 1st State Stories website: "The old saying is scrapple is made of seven different kinds of meat, all of them fit to eat."

Rumbleway uses Haas Butcher shop near Dover, Delaware, a family-owned operation that has been in business since 1955. There are not many local butchers left on Delmarva, and even fewer slaughter houses, but Haas is one that seems to be highly-regarded. To me, butchering is one of those skills that is passing away too quickly. With all of the concern about factory farms, I think we need to support and preserve the skills of the local butcher. I'm only half-joking to my husband when I say the knife skills he learned as a chef may come in handy some day. (Photo of scrapple making at the Family Butcher in Delaware)

Taken from another perspective, however, the decline of local butchers seems to directly correlate with our society's disconnect with where our meat comes from, and the fact that it once lived and breathed. In the New York Times last week, a columnist who forthrightly stated he was no vegetarian but he felt it was important for him to know his meat was humanely raised and killed before it made it to his plate, was both congratulated and vilified as a hypocrite in comments. I have never considered becoming a vegetarian and respect those who make that choice. Yet, I too want to find meat that has been produced without harming the environment,and without cruelty to the animal.

It makes all the difference for me to know how the animal lived and died. Does it make death pretty? No, but the awareness the death of animals for food used to be part of daily life everywhere in this country. On Delmarva for many generations, every fall brought family and community together for essential hard work. The animals were not treated more poorly then; on the contrary, I would say nearly all beef and pork in the late 1800s (and much more recently in some areas) was natural, grass-fed, and probably organic. The livestock were well-cared for because they were essential for the family's survival. It was only when the slaughter process moved away from the farm and the household that it became unfeeling, inhumane, and eventually unhealthful. Taking a hand in the birth, life and death of animals on the farm engendered a respect for the sacrifice God's creatures were making. That is one of the reasons I am working toward raising my own chickens, so I can truly understand that process and expose my children to it as well.

In any case, I was EXCITED about going to pick up my four large boxes of pork, but in the name of gas conservation and making full use of a trip to the other end of the county, I looked at Spring Valley Farm's ripe report to see if they had pick-your-own peaches. I had hoped to go blueberry picking earlier in the month, but just couldn't justify driving the distance. I discovered both white and yellow freestone peaches were ready, and set off with a wooden half-bushel basket and a wooden crate. My containers, it turned out, were largely unsuitable. The knowledgeable lady at the stand said the wooden crate was too heavy and I could only place peaches two deep in the basket. She gave me some useful, but less nostalgic, waxed cardboard flats.

As the kids and I followed the signs to the trees that were at their peak of ripeness, I flashed back to trips to a peach orchard with my mother and my brother when I was a kid. We always brought wooden baskets and I think our own ladder. I recall being chewed pretty thoroughly by some lower Shore mosquitos and developing an itchy rash on my forearms from the peach fuzz. Picking couldn't have been better on this day, however, with temperature in the mid-80s, fairly low humidity and not a mosquito in sight.

I had asked the Quaker woman who was one of the farm's owners whether the white peaches were better than the yellow. "Find a ripe one and taste it," she generously suggested. The white peaches were large and abundant, so we took 5 minutes to survey the orchard and find one that was perfectly ripe. I dusted it off on my shirt a little gingerly ("you can't grow peaches organically," the owner had told me) and bravely took a bite. It was like I'd never tasted a real peach before, as the sweet smell and taste collided. I beckoned the kids over and they each tried it and gushed over the deliciousness. Of course, we had to try a yellow one for comparison. Very tasty also, but the white were superior in my opinion.

I knew ahead of time that I had to control my picking. My second memory of peach-picking with my mother is that she often bit off more than she could chew, and picked so many peaches that she would be tied to the kitchen counter for the next week, peeling and pitting peaches to can and freeze. Upon arrival home, she would spread the peaches out on old canvas paint tarps on our front porch under the ping pong table, taking up about half of the porch. But eating her peaches in winter... oh, I can't even buy a canned peach in the store and forget one of those baseballs they sell in February. Mom shared some of last summer's peaches with us this past Father's Day over some angel food cake. I think that's when the burning desire to put up my own peaches started anew.

The peaches were a dollar a pound. Is that a good price? It sounded like a lot, when you're used to harvesting produce for free from your own garden. But the smell of the peaches, the sight of my children picking without being asked and my daughter's face dripping with peach juice was just too...intoxicating. After the weigh-in, the total was $72. I didn't really go overboard, did I? (Telling the story later, I related how I drove home with a whole pig and 50 pounds of peaches. "72 pounds," my daughter reminded me. "How much were the peaches?" my husband asked when he got home. "$70!" I exclaimed. "72 dollars," my daughter repeated. I think she understands me.)

With warnings from the orchardist to carry my peaches home in the front of the truck and to spread them out immediately upon getting home, we headed to Rumbleway to pick up the pork. Although the farm raises its own beef and chickens, the pigs actually come from a farm near my childhood home in Dorchester County, still local but considered natural rather than organic. The biggest challenge for most of the farmers seems to be finding certified organic grain. Pigs are almost always finished with grain, whereas beef can finish on grass. So while the pork is not organic, I still know what I am getting.

While the kids spent some time with the chickens in the barn, I asked to see where they processed their poultry. It was small, but efficient-looking. My idea of plucking and eviscerating under the maple tree in my backyard seems a little rustic in comparison. I asked if I could help with the processing next spring so I could learn how to do it, and they said absolutely, as if it were a most ordinary request. And then we were off, 150 pounds of thawing pork in the bed of the truck and 70 pounds (72 pounds, Mom) of delicate peaches in the front and the kids in the jump seats in the back. On the way home, I made my weekly stop at Locust Point Farm to pick up organic milk in glass bottles. All in all, a good day for a locavore.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde