Canning

This week I made strawberry rhubarb jam and canned peaches. My favourite thing to do in the late summer is harvesting, whether it is the garden, berries that have been picked and cleaned, or fruit. I think my favourite fruit are peaches.

Remembering canning in our little old house on the farm in Fort Vermilion, I believe that we did some of our canning outside over a camp stove. When it was too hot inside or we had too many pots for the kitchen stove, we moved outside to can our garden vegetables and jams. We didn't have much fruit as it didn't grow on our land. Our few acres did provide for us, our cows, pigs, and chickens, who, in turn provided for us. That was a time we all worked hard, for we grew or raised all our own food. I think that we only bought our staples like flour, sugar, salt and pepper, and things like cinnamon and baking powder. The rest we grew or foraged for.

The foraging came in the form of berry picking. I don't know how many times someone got stung by a bee or ended up standing on an ant hill. But I do know that we enjoyed the fruits of our labours: mushed up wild strawberries and cream on homemade white bread, saskatoon cake or pie, and cranberry jelly. I can still smell the high bush cranberries as we walked through the poplars in the fall.

Our roasted chickens and smoked ham and beef roast came to the table from out in the yard, after hours, weeks, and months of work by our parents and us to get the food ready for eating. Dad would butcher the chickens, and Mom and the girls would pluck the feathers, clean out the insides, singe the hair, pick pin feathers, and clean them, getting them ready for freezing. Dad would butcher pigs and steers and dress them, freezing the meat, or mom would can some. Dad would put the hams, hocks, and bacon in a brine and then smoke them for days in the smokehouse. Sometimes, we would go along to 'check' the ham and we'd get a treat carved off. Yum!

Those times and that food will never be fogotten. I know that some of us resented the work we had to do on the farm, and I must have complained a time or two as well, but today, in the age of convenience, I miss the taste of food grown and prepared by hand. I find myself canning, freezing, and foraging for berries in a new way, at the farmer's market or at the fruit stand, in order to capture what I'm missing.

For all of the nostalgia of canning and preserving, the one thing I miss most is the comraderie of the family, yes, sometimes the fighting too. :-) We worked together, played together and prayed together, and for all our little faults, I know my family loves each other and I wish we could spend more time together. That's why, when we get together for family weddings, etc,. we try to forget our disagreements or differences and we remember the fun we had and the simpler times.