Canning Season

Growing up, we would head back to the farm once or twice during the summer.   Dad always made it a point to be around during hay season, and we always spent a week in late July or early August, helping out as the big summer crops starting coming in.

It's been well over 30 years, but I still vividly remember crouching in long rows, pulling green beans or some other vegetable, with the sweat trickling down the back of my neck and off of the end of my nose, and swatting at the biting flies as I went.

Up and down those rows we would go, harvesting the vegetable of the day before they went bad.  We had to get that summer bounty in fast!

There are no lazy summer days on a farm.  Granny had us out picking before the sun got high in the sky.  She'd send us out around 7 in the morning, armed with a sausage and egg sandwich and a glass of milk.  We were finished before 10 - and if we weren't, Granny made us come in because that was the "hot time" of the day.

I don't know why she pulled us inside, because that house ended up becoming hotter than a furnace before the day was out.

We'd come in out of the sun, sit on the porch, and begin prepping the food.  Things needed to be snapped, peeled, and cut.  Many of the veggies had to be blanched - dumped in boiling water, and then dumped in ice water, and then peeled so that they could be prepared for canning.

Once everything was prepped, things were stuffed into the jars.  And I do mean stuffed.  Granny and my Aunts didn't fool around with extra space in those jars.  They were jam packed.

Lids and Rings went on, and the pressure canners were pulled out and filled.  The farm house had a gas stove, with six burners.  They would have 4 canners going at a time. (And the house would get hotter and hotter and hotter.  They never ran the A/C when they were canning because they saw it as a lost cause and waste of energy.)

While the canners were building up steam, we would be cleaning the mess.  Once the first batch was done, the second batch went in.  We would clean up the first batch,  and they would start getting dinner ready.  Part of the nightly feast was whatever failed in the canner that day.  (If the lids didn't seal, the food was eaten that night.)

At the end of the week, we would come home with a car laden down with our portion of all of the jars of goodies that had been canned over the week.

My favorite of all the goodies we canned were the peaches.  Maybe because when we picked them, we were in the shade.  Maybe because we could eat the peaches straight off the tree when we picked them.  And maybe it was because when they were canned in simple syrup, and opened up several months later in the dead of winter, I was immediately transported back to the farmhouse kitchen, bubbling with good smells, laughter, and family.  But whatever the reason, the peaches have always been my favorite.

I was at the farmer's market, and guess what I found?  Bushels and bushels of peaches!
We came home with a bushel of peaches.  Okay, a couple of the peaches didn't actually make it home...  I don't can now - I have a glass stove top, and that is not recommended for pressure canning.  BUT - I did make some peach jelly.  And some peach crisp with gluten free oats.

And last night?

I made a simple syrup, and I poured it over some peaches that I had blanched, cut, and slightly heated up with the syrup.

As soon as I put that first bite in my mouth, I was instantly taken back to a farm house kitchen, full of good smells, laughter, and family.

Priceless memory.  All from a bushel of peaches.