We LOVED to bring friends to the Farm, always. When we were children, when we grew up. I was ecstatic in November of 2006 when Grandma invited my family to stay on the Farm on our visit to St. Mary’s. It was a place where I literally spent half my childhood hours, as did most of my siblings and several of our cousins. Someone else farms the land, the animals are long gone, the barns are skeletons of what once was, but how it has evolved and how it used to be were very influential on the person I am today. Our parents took us down to the Farm on a regular basis, and we practically lived there during the summer months.
Growing and harvesting tobacco. Hay, straw, soy beans, wheat, corn, huge gardens full of white potatoes, sweet potatoes, watermelons, cantaloupe, the BEST tomatoes you can ever imagine, string beans, apple and pear trees. The every popular bing cherry tree, grape arbor and blackberry bushes, and so much more. One year Gramps tried out popcorn. I’ve yet to taste popcorn that was better than that year. Another year he planted peanuts. Mmmmm. HUGE black walnut trees, which in turn meant bushels of walnuts on the roadway to drive over in the Fall.
Of course, someone had to do all this work, so we ALL did it.
And let me tell you, we became experts in how to process foods, how to freeze the meats, how to can the fruits, veggies, and apparently sometimes the meats. Cutting apples until our hands were stained brown from the juices from days on end of processing the applesauce. One year we canned 400 jars of applesauce at Mom’s house alone. Grandma used to can twice that to make sure she had enough for all her kids, grandkids and visitors that were always at the house.
Meals were 3x a day. Breakfast, Dinner and Supper. There is a Distinction between Dinner and Supper, ask anyone from Down County. There was no “lunch” until we all left the nest and ventured out of the county to places that didn’t know any better.
For the canning at Grandma’s we’d have to go upstairs to the “Jar Room” and get as many jars as we could carry down without dropping or breaking any of them: pint, quart, half gallon jars, depending on what was cooking at the time. Concord grape juice went into the half gallon jars, jelly and fig preserves went into the pints, pretty much everything else went into the quarts. One year Grandma made homemade ketchup. That went into the pints, if my memory serves me well.
Once the jars were downstairs, we had to wash them all. No electric dishwashers around at that time! It was important to have the jars VERY clean, especially the tops, the rims. They were cleaned again after the processed foods were added, just before the jar lids were added.
For things like applesauce and tomato sauce, we’d use the Food Mill to separate out all the seeds and skins. The timing for canning is critical, the best time to try to seal the jars is when the food is still hot, the jars are hot, and the water in the cooker is hot. Less broken jars that way. For the sealing, usually we used a pressure cooker to seal the jars. Pressure cookers are awesome.
After the jars were done in the pressure cooker, they would be moved to a towel on the counter or on the kitchen table. Then, over the next hour, anyone within earshot would hear the familiar “pop” of the lids as the seals finished forming the necessary vacuums on each jar. Any jars that didn’t seal properly for some reason could be tried again with a new seal, or we’d use it for the next meal. Then, take a crayon to write the month and year on the top of the jar lid, as it was hot and would just melt the crayon perfectly.
Once the jars were fully sealed and cooled off, we had the job of taking them down to the cellar, which was located directly under the kitchen. Check the sides of the cellar stairs as you go down, careful to notice if there were any snakes or particularly large spiders lingering around. Put the newly canned jars to the back of the shelves, bringing the older jars forward so they could all be used up first.
Canning days at Mom’s and Grandma’s are over. Most of the families don’t can anymore. I get very excited when I hear that someone is canning things, it’s such a pleasant reminder of the “old days” of our youth. I personally have canned many things over the years, but was limited to that which could be done in a hot water bath, as I didn’t have a pressure cooker. Things like apple butter, pumpkin butter, jellies, jams and such. Also, since we moved away from Down County, most of the things I canned by myself or with a friend in NM or CA were done as gifts for Christmas.
When I heard Miriam was canning so much, it brought a smile to my face, a familiar knowing of the kinds of experiences she was having. Then, when Dean offered her the opportunity to help Grandma get her cellar cleared out, which would also help her with acquiring more jars, that was very nice to hear. It meant she would get a glimpse into “our world”, which honestly, no one can understand unless they experience it. That is not meant to be an offense to anyone. It’s good country living, when the communications are open and honest of course, and it’s very near and dear to my heart. I know that all my friends that ever got the opportunity to visit the Farm with me or my family just had a great time.
In going down memory lane, it occurred to me that now Miriam has a tie to Down County, whether she likes it or not. Whether she chooses to keep it or not. The jars represent about 60 or so years of canning by my family. The generations before that also canned, but these jars are likely at least 30 physical years old, if not 40 or 50, and still working fine. They were handled by “all of us kids”, which means any kids that were on the farm at a time when jars were needed. We all washed those very jars, helped process the foods that went into them, time in and time out, and then opened them for the meals we all shared. Washed them, returned them to the jar room, started the cycle over again and again, and again. Same thing at Mom’s house. Her jars went to the Amish ladies last year, which means they also went to good homes, and will be well used.
Digressing: tandem bicycle, playing cowboys and Indians when we didn’t know the definition of “politically correct”, tag, moo cow, go-carts, feeding the animals, stacking the hay trailers….
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The problem is, we don't do "enough"! We don't pay attention, we don't appreciate, we don't automatically and unconditionally wish others the best, and probably worst of all, we don't LAUGH enough! In this case, passing on a Dean Family Tradition to someone new to the County will likely bring up some emotions in just about all of us. For me, it's a trip down memory lane, and a pleasant one at that. To some degree, sad also, but only in the sense that those days are over as they were (and as we already knew them to be), sad in that Mom is the one who I did the most canning with and for, and now all that is left are the memories. The future is in others making more memories. I hope that those of the family who learn about the jars and find themselves also in memory lane will do that which makes them happiest, which implicitly means: paying attention, appreciating, wishing others the best, and LAUGHING and smiling at the memories.
I’m sure Miriam had a fantastic and interesting time on her first trip to St. Mary’s, you can check out her blog here. She will surely enjoy the many hours of canning opportunities that will be presented in her quest for living more off the land. Good luck to you, I wish you many fun hours and memories of your own!
You said it well. I thought about posting, but there's too much symbolism spinning in my head to get it all straight and in print right now. Most of those jars are olde than both of us. My wish is that they still carry the energy within them that we experienced.
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