Saving My World, One Fruit At A Time

In the same way that a trip to Walmart almost always forces me to question my life's decisions, as in "Do I need this in bulk?" and "Why haven't I had pork rinds before?",  lately I find myself  yearning for a small farm. Growing my own food.  A fully stocked root cellar.  I feel the need to process something in a hot water bath on a daily basis.

This may or may not relate to my sense that the world is on it's way to hell in a handbasket, but I digress.

It starts every season when there are two simultaneous occurrences. First, harvest season is upon us, and while here at home our garden is wearing the sad cloak of a too hot, too dry summer, the farm stands are bursting with things that cry out for saving for a winter night.  And second, school vacation has reached its apex and I am  filled with the sense that winter is not far behind with its long nights, monochromatic color scheme, and the pace of our life will once again be frenetic.  Our meals will once again come about through luck and happenstance rather than  careful thought and preparation.  We will be fed, but without the care that comes during full-on farming season in the Northeast.

My grandparents come from farming backgrounds.  Hard lives, hardscrabble times, and few luxuries.  Growing up, in admittedly less trying and more comfortable times, my grandmother taught my mother to can, and she, in turn, taught me.  As a teen, I canned alongside my grandmother.  Peaches.  Pears.  Tomatoes.  Beans.  Pickles.  In her basement was a fully stocked pantry of canned goods, groaning with summer spoils, and a feast for the eyes when one ventured into the clanking darkness in December or January to retrieve a jar of pure joy.

The shelves in the root cellar were such a treasure that long after my grandmother passed away, the family wouldn't open the last jars of peaches and pickles.  As long as we had them, we hadn't lost that moment.  That experience.  Sadly, over time, they become lost to all of us due to time and the increasing risk of botulism as time ticked onward.

This week I made raspberry currant jam with my children.  Small batch doesn't even begin to describe the scope of my "putting food by".  Five pints.  But my children glow with the pride of having made something.  They keep making lists of people to give this treasure to.  And it is a treasure.  It is history and love and forethought all in one little glass jar.

In the same manner, my children perused the garden last night and asked if there is anything else to can.  At the moment, there isn't, but I reminded them of the pesto we have in the freezer that we made earlier in the season.  The strawberry and raspberry jam in the pantry.  And, if the season and time cooperate, the applesauce and tomato sauce that will soon find their way to a jar with a snappy little label in the coming weeks.

So it really comes as no surprise that as we drove today, the readers in the car noted a sign that boasted PYO blueberries and peaches.  In a flash of nostalgia, I remember standing at the sink with my grandma, dropping peaches into a bath of boiling water and then submerging them in an ice water tub, all to the end of being able to rub the skin off in a nearly complete sheet and commentary on their rather anatomical appearance.  Slicing them into a mason jar, spooning syrup over them and setting them to process.  Yes, today we will can peaches.

But, as many things nostalgic go, we arrive at the stand to find that there are small boxes of peaches at a preposterous price.  Surely this was the price for the labor done for you?  We were here, in slightly rainy weather to "PYO".  Alas, the woman at the stand said, in a slightly weary voice that resonated with "This is the 500th time I have said this today..." that s a result of the summer weather we have had, there are no peaches to be picked in New England.  These peaches had been brought up from, (and here she added a slight shudder), Pennsylvania.

"You may want to reconsider the "Pick Your Own" sign at the end of the drive."  I offered, I thought helpfully.

"It's the sign from last year.  We didn't have paint to get rid of the PYO.  Do you want to pick blueberries instead?"

Actually, I had very little interest in replacing peaches with blueberries.

"Or perhaps you would like to pet the goats?"  Yes, I'm certain that will lend my sugar syrup a little je ne sais quois in place of the peaches.  I'd like to say that I refused the peaches on the basis of regionally procuring my food, but the reality is that I refuse to pay roughly two dollars per peach, in order to labor over them and can them, bringing the cost per bite to somewhere near minimum wage.

And so, we returned home without peaches.  And we made jam nonetheless with the plums that I bought upon request of my children, but which have sat untouched once the battle was won.  Plum preserves with vanilla bean.  ( Please note, I feel the need to procure a great deal more plums in the near future. ) Even if they do come from Pennsylvania.  Or even *gasp* New Jersey.

Just Wait A Martha Minute

I call a timeout.  I'm flipping through a magazine and there is modern-day Superwoman with her perfectly pressed clothing and her pitcher of orange juice.  The kids, so evenly spaced they look like a picket fence surround the table beaming and clearly enthralled with whatever masterpeice she is about to put down on the table.  But wait, let's not be sexist or parentist, or whatever...Dad is actually friskily trotting to the table with a platter of pancakes and a crstal decanter of syrup, (probably infused with some little known herb that creates perfect children is my guess).  But here is where the actual call of "y una mierda!" comes into play....There is a vase of flowers in the middle of the table.  Nope.  I may be led to believe you got up at the crack of dawn to put together a breakfast buffet for your impeccable family and ironed your clothing just to dish up their nutritious meal, but I don't for one Martha Minute believe the flowers sat there unmolested.  Pod people!  Robots perhaps.  But not children.

Now contrast this with my reality.  I have items of clothing I have not worn in TWO YEARS because I cannot iron them.  Despite a recent statement implying  that it was assumed I don't own an iron, I do own one.  I know where it is.  I just haven't got the five minutes it takes to do it.  Okay so my wardrobe is not all that natty lately.  I can live with that.  If I'm coming to your wedding, I will drug the children and iron.

The kids in my house are too far apart to like each other all the time, and too close together to be helpful to one another.  The only pickets are in our backyard and even those are poorly spaced.  Unless there is rum in the banana bread, they are never beaming with anticipatory glee as meal time descends.  Two often look like they are preparing to be waterboarded, and one is actually gagging like a cast member on Survivor.

And this morning, in the span of time it took to take muffins, Mr. Unscripted disappeared next door to cut down a tree.  Using the car.  Yup, you read that right.  The car that I get grief for parking too close to shopping carts and cart corrals is being used as a tether point for a tree in the process of being less upright and more "relaxed and in repose" as we speak.  So there is no frisky prep of breakfast  "a Deux" this morning in this household.  And those beaming children of mine?  Well , they managed to both encrust themselves in mud while being "supervised" outdoors, as well as in one case, befoul themselves.  Glory be!  

Pass that juice Darling won't you?  And be a dear and dabble a little spirits in there for me?

And back to the flowers.  When was the last time flowers sat anywhere in my house undisturbed? I hearken back to ten years ago.  In the meantime, any and all flowers have been part of the collateral damage.  Within seconds of their landing, someone has pulled out their favorite, tried to add more water, or move it to another location, (often the edge of the table or as close to an important document as possible.) 

And the final quote of the magazine interview reeled me back in..."I just like to use unconventional colors to make my room pop.  I like the unusual and unexpected."   Me too sister.  Me too.  So please, try not to sit on the most recent installment of Mount Washmore in the wingback, we're going for avante garde.  And the Rorschach  that is my dining room rug?  That is my nod to the unconventional...dinner and a diagnosis.  And finally, the flowers?  I'm not even bothering with faux floral at this point.  Come with me to my phone, I'll show you a picture of some flowers that I saw once on a glorious three hour trip without my children.  Try to ignore my wrinkled and out of date clothing.