Canning Past And Present

[Sharon Baughman]

 

I have literally been around canning as long as I can  remember.  I was blessed to have four Grandparents and a Great Grandmother who all shared a tremendous love of gardening and all had a great appreciation for canning.  My favorite earliest canning memory was visiting my Grandparents on my Mom's side and being down in the root cellar looking through all the beautiful jars of canned goodies, all of which came from the garden.  I also remember my other Grandmother and Great Grandmother canning together and making pickles.  And there were a lot to make for my other Grandpa's garden resembled a small farm!  I remember one year he grew so many cucumbers they had to sell some of them to a local store!

 

Over the years, I gardened alot and froze a lot, canned occasionally.  I also always supported local farm stands and farmers' markets, trying to buy local as often as possible.  Both of my kids loved to help and I have great memories of them shucking corn and snapping beans.  Both of my kids (who are now pretty much grown) to this day still preferred home canned or frozen fruits and vegetables over the store bought stuff.

 

Along came a hurricane named Ike, which changed things even more.  We realized after riding Ike out and it's aftermath that we had to do better and I needed to step up the canning a lot.  We had been very dependent on our freezers and a long stretch of Ike induced power outage for many days made us realize we needed to have more on the shelf and less in the freezer.  I began to can a lot and I still can every week, sometimes several times a week.  As a result, in time we went from three freezers down to about a freezer and a half full of things, everything else is on the shelf.

 

So what do I can?  Just about everything.  My latest projects have included jalapeno jelly and hot spicy pickles (all ingredients coming from my garden) and minted pears (pears courtesy of a family freind's pear tree, mint courtesy of my herb garden).  I have also done some very different canning as I've also successfully canned bacon, menudo, lingua, and barbacoa.  I also make and can my own German red cabbage and sauerkraut.  My family happily gobbles it up and looks for more.  Two of our Grandchildren were over at the house a few days ago and between the two of them, they took 10 jars of various fruits, pickles, pickled jalapeno, and grape jelly with them and our Granddaughter wanted to know when I'd be doing more pineapple.

 

Although canning is enjoying a new revival of interest, I also enjoy it because it keeps an old (and very sentimental) tradition in our family alive which is something a lot of people still have no knowledge was.  When my daughter attended college in New York last year, I sent her six pints of fruits (pineapple, peaches, blackberries, apple pie filling).  Her roommates actually had never seen anything like that and swore they came out of a grocery store even though my daughter told them "no, my Mom made these."  I was amazed.  Those girls inhaled those jars of fruit!

 

My greatest pleasure of a canner came last December.  I went home to Pennsylvania to help bury my last living Grandmother and while I was there, I spent a lot of time with my 94 year old Grandfather.  His big thing he wanted to discussed with me was.....canning and he wanted to hear about everything.  For him, it brought back wonderful memories and a reminder that he used to love home canned pickled tongue more than anything.  As I don't remember my Grandmother making this, it must have been something his Mother made when she was alive many, many years ago. 

 

Another wonderful thing is sharing this precious gift with the future.  Our oldest Granddaughter (age 17) has become a wonderful canning helper and she enjoys helping out.  Our oldest Grandson (also age 17) has become an avid and very skilled gardener with a big interest in preserving old traditions, which includes canning.  His family just canned their first pickles out of their garden this year and it gave them a lot of pride to do that.

 

Don't be afraid to try canning.  There are many good resources to help get you started.  The Ball Blue Book is a wonderful guide to canning.  There are also many good web pages which discuss canning.  The Georgia and Nebraska state extensions both have outstanding web sites.  Alaska also has a great one, particularly where canning fish is concerned.  Another favorite site of mine is pickyourown.org.  This site has pictures to guide you through step by step and pictures are a wonderful thing.  Happy canning!