The Things we Learn

The small town I lived in as a kid was a ranching community and most everyone seemed to have gardens and fruit trees where the fruit was plenty! The town was so small, that everyone knew everyone else and knew each other's stories. So, of course, everyone knew my mom was a single mom trying to raise two daughters on a very tiny salary. The tiny salary was a trade off for living in such a tight knit place. There were many, many times people would send my mom $50 in the mail, drop off groceries on our doorstep and it wasn't uncommon for my mom to go out to her car after work and find fresh veggies from someone's garden or fresh fruit from someone's trees. One time someone left a whole ham dinner in her car! Harvest time was the best time. Someone would set up a fire roaster in town and roast green chilies and a local guy would go to Utah and buy several cases of peaches and sell them. He was always so nice and sold them at a discounted rate to my mom.

Because of these wonderful fruits and veggies, we were always canning so we would be able to eat them all year round. We would do apple sauce and apple butter. With the peelings and pits, we would boil those down and use the juice for apple jelly. We would do the same with the peach skins and pits. We canned peaches, peach jam and peach jelly. We canned grape jelly, strawberry jam, green beans, corn, pickles, tomato juice and pears. One year my mom got her hands on cherries. My grandma was visiting us at the time and she sat at the table pitting cherries for hours while I helped my mom make cherry jam. We had cherry pits and juice all over the place and our hands were stained red for weeks, but that was the best jam ever!! For weeks at the end of summer our evenings and weekends were filled with canning and making homemade bread to freeze so we would have plenty to hold us over the winter. What wonderful memories I have of this. My sister is 6 years younger than me so she was pretty small and doesn't really remember all of those things very much. My mom would then take all of our hard work and enter it into the county fair. She would win ribbons on all of her canning stuff and get a little bit of money out of it.

Because she taught me all of these things, I have been canning my own stuff for a long time. I'm not as consistant with it because I have to find the produce in season and find a place to buy it in bulk on the cheap. But, over the years I have canned apple pie filling thanks to my dad and stepmom, pinto beans, salsa, tomato juice, spaghetti sauce, pear butter, apple butter and all different kinds of jams and jellies. It is so great to be able go to the pantry and pull out a bottle of something that I canned. I'm also going to be able to teach my kids what I know and hopefully they will be able to pass it on as they have their own families. It's a wonderful tradition!

This year I planted a garden. It is a slightly raised bed garden, not very big, but I'm so excited to have it! There is something very satisfying about being able to go to the backyard and pick something out of the garden for dinner. So far all I've been able to use is lettuce and chives, but I have a few tomatoes growing and the other plants are starting to get big so I'm pretty sure I will have something soon! Hopefully next year I can make it bigger and plant enough tomatoes that I will be able to can them somehow. My dad has a green thumb and is the garden expert...HE'S impressed with my gardening! :)