I’m sure some bloggers remember my leaving comments on their blogs about how I was so looking forward to canning, and freezing, and growing everything from scratch when we moved up here.
It’s harvest day every day,
up here right now.
This is like the fruit capital of Canada or something… and everyone is trying to give fruit away to friends and neighbours. We get offers from complete strangers who know someone who knows someone who knows us… it’s there for the taking, it’s wonderful, it’s free, and it’s a heck of a lot of work.
How woefully unprepared I am for doing anything other then the limited amount of freezing that I have done so far. I have to ask myself as I pit my millionth cherry… who’s great idea was this? Oh right, this is what I wanted.
Where are the steamy memories of my Mom wiping the sweat from her brow, as she blanched and peeled yet another peach… plucked green beans till her fingers bled, and canned cherries, plums, apricots and blueberries. Our hot little kitchen just a glowing with the canned fruit, and jams lining up the countertops, all neatly covered in clean tea towels. The popping sounds would echo through the house all night as the jars cooled, and the lids contracted.
I remember skipping in with bare feet, dusty legs, and tangled hair, damp after playing in the backyard sprinkler all afternoon, and there was my Mom in the kitchen. Dishevelled, tired, and so happy that she had once again attacked that mountain of fruits and veg they picked up at the country stands all in order to save her family from starvation that winter.
Apricots and peaches our favourite, cherries, and blueberries the close second. We didn’t like the canned plums, those lasted until the next spring, and the masses of peaches were gone by Christmas. Do you can? Did your Mom can? Did you live the life of delicious canned fruit for desert in the dead of winter? I still have those glorious memories of jars of fruit all lined up… Pitting cherries again…