Wednesday, January 14, 2015

A Canning Choreography

Gazing at all the snow lying on the ground and watching the temperature dip into the below zero range last night, I found myself thinking of my parents' vegetable garden. Yes, I travelled back to those warm August days when everything ripened quickly and we had more fresh vegetables than we knew how to use. The garden covered a generous portion of ground, and featured tomatoes, beans (both pole and bush), squash, okra, corn, collards, Hanover greens, potatoes, and sometimes cantaloupes. Those were delicious days!

My father planted 100 tomato plants every year, two rows of 50 plants. He had developed an elegant and efficient system of supports that interconnected all the plants along each row. (We never had floppy tomato plants.) This efficient technique, of course, meant that all 100 of the plants produced ripe tomatoes in abundance at the same time (or nearly so). Such conditions meant 'all hands on deck' to can tomatoes!

My parents had worked out an impeccably precise method of getting the tomatoes from the garden to the kitchen to the canning jars, and it remains a thing of beauty to me as I remember their system. The success of canning night depended on each of us doing our allotted tasks quickly and without mistakes or complaints.

Our portion of the procedure, as the children at the lower end of the production line, involved picking the tomatoes. We filled bag after bag after bag, sometimes sneaking a deliciously ripened, red, sun-warmed tomato to eat right there in the garden. Bringing the bags to the kitchen, we unloaded them under the watchful eye of our mother. She looked over our choices, then washed the tomatoes and put them in a scalding water bath to remove the skins. We hovered in the background, handing her utensils or anything else she needed, and doing whatever she told us to do. She was in command in the kitchen!

A gleaming array of sterilized quart jars already stood ready to receive the tomatoes. These had been prepared whilst we were picking the tomatoes. My mother quickly cut the skinned tomatoes into chunks and packed the jars to her satisfaction. She took out the sterilized rings and lids from their own scalding water bath and expertly sealed up the jars. Then one of us put the jars into a wire canning basket and took the basket out to the garage.

All of this activity occurred during the hottest part of the summer, and we didn't have any air conditioning, so my father set up the pressure canner in our garage, using our Coleman camping stove as the heat source. We carried out the basket full of sealed tomato jars and handed it over to my father. He always made me think of Hephaestus, at work in front of his furnace. Daddy put the basket into the pressure canner, closed down the canner, and began to watch the pressure increase so he could time the process. Did I mention how hot the weather was? My father was drenched in perspiration--it just rolled down his face and soaked his T-shirt--and he just grinned and bore it. Once this basket full of jars finished sealing properly, one of us carried it back into the kitchen. Mother (or one of us) removed the completed jars and loaded up another set. The assembly line in the kitchen had continued whilst one batch of jars sealed in the pressure canner.

Finally, the last jars of tomatoes finished sealing and my father turned off the Coleman stove. My mother had already cleaned up the pots and pans she had used in the kitchen and restored order. We had set the cooling jars off to the side to prevent their damage, and I think my brother usually helped my father empty the pressure canner (a remarkably heavy device). All of us were very glad to sit down and have glasses of ice water or iced tea and let our big fan draw the evening breeze through the house. What a day!

The average 'yield' of my parents' tomato patch during the canning rush was 35 quarts of tomatoes. We had, of course, been eating tomatoes as soon as the first ones ripened, and we would continue to eat whatever the vines produced for the rest of the summer, but the rush was over. These quarts of tomatoes stood on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet all winter long, in company with many, many quarts of green beans, and this meant that once a week from autumn until tomatoes began to ripen the next summer, we could have a meal that featured those lovely, delicious tomatoes. All the hard work paid off wonderfully.

Many years have passed since my parents kept their garden and orchestrated the canning process, but I can almost taste those tomatoes even now. And the memory of their finely-tuned choreography always brings a smile!

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