From the middle of June until the end of September the harvest is being gathered in hereabouts. Our Northeast Ohio summer growing season is approximately four months long; we plant our vegetable gardens sometime in May, and we put it all to bed in September or October. The fruits and berries add another layer to the harvest, with their annual sweet offerings requiring a bit less active maintenance. But this post is not about the planting and the growing…the weeding and the picking. It is about the marvel that is preserving the bounty…saving the goodness for another day.
An Unconventional Beginning to a Conventional Skill
In 1989, during the muggy month of August, we moved our family of six from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado into a century-old farmhouse situated on 31 acres in northeast Ohio. There were many, many things wrong with the house and outbuildings and the yard and the pasture. But we did not see the work and the expense and the trouble; we were too enchanted with the possibilities. We had no inklings about the degree of draftiness of the old wooden windows, or the presence of vermin in the stone basement, or the dangers of the ancient wiring. We had a farm! Or rather, we had a future farm. Little could I have guessed that we would still be renovating in 2022, long after our four children had grown up and left and had children of their own.
On the acreage there were a dozen or so mature (and diseased) apple trees, a couple of old pear trees, and a sickly Concord grape vineyard. There were lots of wild blackberries along the edge of the woods, and, we would soon discover, lots of poison ivy. Behind the detached garage we could see it, though. The vision was so clear. The perfect setting for our vegetable garden. Back in the 70’s, in our suburban Texas home we had grown a small garden in our postage stamp-sized backyard. We knew we had what it took to grow some vegetables and live off the land.
In the spring of 1990, we tilled a garden plot. It was roughly 2400 square feet. It was a ridiculous undertaking for our first real garden, but there you have it. Go big, or go home. There were six of us, after all, and we knew our children would be helpful in all those garden chores. So yeah…we planted five or six rows of green beans, a dozen or so tomato plants, rows upon rows of sweet corn, onions, hills of squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, even our favorite southern treat…okra. Over the ensuing years we would plant a patch of blueberries.
The actual process of preserving all of this produce, I awkwardly confess, had not really come together in my mind, however. I know that my grandmothers had preserved food in their hardscrabble beginnings, but I had never witnessed my own mother practicing that craft. It just seemed that I was supposed to do this; something in me was moving me toward a different lifestyle. We had a freezer…and there was this sort of closet with shelves down in the basement…possibly a pantry?? The romance of the garden had overwhelmed me, and now I had to actually figure some things out.
Two Canning Angels and Garage Sale Treasures
I wish there were a more spiritual way to say this, but since we had moved to Ohio we had been church shopping. We enjoyed visiting congregations that were similar to our religious backgrounds and upbringings, but we were also taking advantage of our move to the midwest to experience other groups as well. One Sunday morning we visited a small church in a larger town in the next county. After the morning service, we were greeted by many friendly folks and were happy to talk freely about our rural aspirations. An older lady started really peppering me with questions about my thoughts concerning canning, asking me about my equipment. Equipment? I had a large water bath canner from a hardware store. And…well that was pretty much it. Her face lit up, and she asked for our address; she said that her canning days were over, and she had some things she would like to pass on to me, if I wanted them. That sounded good to me.
On the following day a nondescript sedan slowly pulled into our crumbling asphalt driveway. The little church lady emerged, smiling brightly, and opened the trunk of her car. I was overwhelmed. That trunk was overflowing with boxes and bags of stuff. There were dozens of glass jars, along with boxes of canning lids and rings. There was a bag of utensils for purposes unknown. And there…in a big cardboard box…was a tarnished, silvery Presto pressure canner. I was delighted and slightly terrified. My husband helped us carry everything into the kitchen, we thanked her profusely, and she drove away. I wish I could remember her name, but since we did not go back to that church, she is just a pleasant, vague memory.
Garage sales became even more alluring to me, as I began to add to my jar collection. I traveled around our county almost every weekend, looking for anything glass with the name Mason, Ball, or Kerr; I recall purchasing bags of jars for $1.00 per dozen.
So…pressure canning…I guess that was the next thing I was going to learn
How ever did we learn things before YouTube? There was an instruction booklet..tiny…more of a pamphlet, really. I read and reread the instructions for canning green beans and finally got up my courage to fire it up. It was successful, but I spent most of the time staring at the pressure gauge, pretty sure an explosion was imminent. When all was said and done, and the summer of 1990 wound down, I had a tidy 75 quarts of green beans stowed away in that basement closet.
A few years later, my mother-in-law made a similar life decision, putting her own canning days behind her. She gifted me with an avocado green Sears pressure canner, along with a plethora of those lovely jars. Some of her jars were truly vintage, pale blue glass with tiny air bubbles visible through the glass. The blue jars were used alongside the clear for a time, but I soon put them to other uses as I began to understand their more aesthetic value and their obviously more fragile (and valuable) state.
Throughout a dozen or so years of using those two appliances I lost only two jars to breaking while canning. Around the turn of the millennium, the last of our children left home, and I heeded the call to return to college and embark on a teaching career. Gardening and canning moved to the back burner (pun intended), and all of the paraphernalia was stowed away, awaiting the next milestone.
Back to the Land 2.0
As I approached retirement five years ago, my thoughts began to return to growing and preserving our food. My career in education had put my love of learning and trying new things into overdrive. Two years earlier I had taken the plunge into acquiring a small flock of chickens. We had enlarged our blueberry patch, added more fruit trees to our little orchard, and added four rows of red and yellow raspberries with a few loganberries. In addition to tapping a few hundred maple trees in our woods and producing 20-30 gallons of maple syrup each spring, we had also purchased a couple of beehives and were learning about the marvels of beekeeping and honey harvesting. I enjoyed trying new recipes, especially baking, and was looking forward to having more free time to explore cooking with fresh ingredients in “from scratch” recipes. The garden was enlarged to a whopping 3600 square feet, and a small grape arbor and three rows of strawberry plants were planted. The garden was enclosed with horse fencing to keep the chickens and deer from doing their thing amid the vegetables.
But those pressure canners could not last forever. Within a month of my return to pressure canning both of the canners became difficult to lock and/or unlock. The diagnosis was a bad case of warped lids on both. They had long and full lives, enhancing the meals of many. The time had come for a new canner. My generous husband knew I had been longing for an All American brand canner, so I had a very merry Christmas in 2019; I had no idea how much more pleasant and controlled and not scary at all pressure canning could be.
Marie’s Kitchen 2022
These days I spend many creative and intensive hours in my kitchen. I have taken up the challenge to return to more natural and healthful cooking techniques. I have begun learning about fermenting and dehydrating foods and making my own sourdough starter and bread. Also on the agenda is working with different grains, grinding them fresh with my own mill.
I still have most of my original jars from my two canning mentors and my garage sale days. I have researched many of the names/labels/designs and know that some of those jars are approaching being a century old. Obviously they were made to last. I find it deeply satisfying to continue reusing these lovely containers.
When I’m in the throes of some culinary challenge, I often think back to those old days of second-hand canners and hand-me-down jars. I have loved this crazy journey. I owe a great debt to those who encouraged me along the way. I hope…I truly hope…I will find some fledgling canner to whom I can pass along my treasures when the time comes.
So sweet and explanatory .