Preserving

I had a very quiet day. In fact, it was almost TOO quiet.....I came close to just getting antsy. I'm sure there was something I should have done...I'll probably think of it about bedtime. But it was a relaxing day.

I was just thinking of all the times in my life that I would have given anything to have a quiet day. When my kids were little, life was so hectic. I never felt like I was really being a good parent, there was always so much work to do.

Think of it – three kids in four and a half years. That was a lot of diapers to wash, a lot of nights without sleep because someone was colicky or teething. I never felt like I was making much headway!

During the summers, it seemed like nonstop canning and freezing, trying to store up enough food to get us through the winter. In the early days, before Child #3 came along, I had two freezers that I filled annually, plus what was called a “fruit room” that was always filled – that room had four shelves, about six feet long each, and deep enough to hold four quart canning jars. It was always filled.

I would keep track on my calendar what I canned every day. During the heart of the summer, my canner was going almost nonstop.......quart jars of green beans, pickles, beets, half-pint jars of carrots and potatoes to use in winter soups, so many things to put up. I froze strawberries, jam, quart bags of sweet corn. As fall came, there were quarts of tomatoes and of tomato juice, applesauce, peaches, plums. I was fortunate that we lived in an area that had high food crop production. We would get apples for the picking off local trees, lugs of fresh peaches for small cost. All it took was some time and energy getting everything preserved. I would even can pumpkin for pies.

As the kids got older, and we lived in different geographic areas, the foods changed some. The kids discovered they liked okra as much as I did, so that was added to the garden. I did bread and butter pickles to go along with the garlic dills. The green beans at some point were switched out for purple beans, which would stay tender to a larger size but still turned green when heated.

In Oregon, my first garden was huge. There were four rows of everbearing strawberries across the garden. They would produce strawberries all summer, with the exception of the one or two hot weeks we would have in early August. My older daughter still loves strawberries, and I remember her going outside for the first time in the spring when she was a year and a half old, and she immediately ran toward the garden to find strawberries. Quite a memory that one has!

As the kids got older, they would help out in the garden. We would work together picking and then snapping beans. They would help me cut corn off the cob and get it ready to freeze. It was nice to have that help......especially when I think of those early days when I had babies and was pregnant and was still canning all day long!

I miss the days of having all that produce to have on hand during the winter months. But I don't miss the work. And I don't miss the times of financially scrambling to keep my kids fed. One of the nicest memories I have was of a Safeway store in Beaverton, Oregon, before #3 was born. There was a worker in that store who was from Jefferson City, and the first time we chatted in the store, he pegged my Missouri accent. From that point on, he was extra kind to the kids and me – and his fellow employees followed suit. One morning I ran to the store to buy plums they had advertised on sale to can. When I got there, the plums hadn't come in. But the produce gal told me she had some overripe peaches if I was interested. She lowered the price to about two and a half dollars – and I went home and canned 28 quarts of peaches!! To those workers, wherever they are, thank you for making that day for me!