They Canned, So I Canned

Both of my grandmothers canned, my mother canned, and until a week ago I had only canned once.

While I never knew my maternal grandmother, Grandma Betty, my mother told lots of stories of a large summer garden in central Illinois. My mother grew up in a house hold with a tight budget and my Grandfather, Gramps, worked furnace maintenance at the glass plant in Lincoln, Illinois. Tight budget + cheap jars+ four children+ summer fresh produce= preserving for the year. My mother remembers growing and canning, green beans, tomatoes, asparagus, sugar beets, and cucumbers. Their summer produce was preserved at its peak freshness. Green beans or some variable was derived and persevered like tomato sauce or pickles. Memories like these are how I have come to know my Grandma Betty.

These photos are of Grandma Toots garden summer 2018

My Paternal Grandmother, Grammy or Toots had a large garden as well. She was a child of the depression and grew up on a wheat/cattle farm in eastern Washington. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to create memories with Grandma Toots in her own garden. Growing up once a year my Dad would anxiously pack the back of our Blue 1988, Plymouth Voyager, and we would drive to Walla Walla, Washington. This usually occurred in the summer and it was always exciting at the end of the two-day drive to finally roll down Bryant street and pull into the driveway. The first defining image was deep brown mocha painted siding on her house and second was her large garden in her side yard. Grandma Toots canned the things she grew too, so much so, it seemed almost industrial. She made, raspberry jam, boysenberry jam, tomato sauce, pickled beets, peaches, and star of her line up was her dill pickles. I never had the experience of spending a day with her canning her produce, but the bi products were always available at every meal and always enjoyed. Especially her pickles. 

   

As a child this cabinet in Granandma Toots basement was filled with full jars. She is 92 this year and does not can much any more

My mother canned and these memories of mine are more vivid because I lived it. My father, like his mother, Grandma Toots, would plant a large garden. The garden was so big that it provided hours of chores for me. The garden was planted with all the produce that makes summer feel like summer. Corn, tomatoes, eggplant, cantaloupes, cucumbers, watermelons, green beans, okra, yellow croke neck squashes, and zucchini. Zucchini was the Bain of my existence because when you by a pony pack of pre-grown squashes there are 6 plants. A normal gardener might plant all six and take out half or two thirds of the plants after the grow a little, get rid of the smaller or less productive of the plants. Facts are facts and the facts are a family of four only needs one zucchini plant to get them through the summer.  We planted all six and all six produced for the whole of summer. The smell of rotting zucchinis still haunts my memories, as well as the embarrassment of opening my back pack and asking my school teachers if they wanted to any squashes because we always had too many to eat and get ride of. On the other hand, and a more positive note, we canned, my mother would make zucchini bread and freeze it, she would can tomatoes, and pickled zucchini relish for hot dogs and hamburgers.  During the summer she would get up early in the morning and get her pots of water boiling, sanitized her jars, process the produce, place a new sealing lid on the jars, and boil them for a while to get the seal right. She would place them on a towel on the counter top. Most of the day we would play outside in the yard because it was cooler outside. Pots of boiling water running for the six hours it took made for a hot house very hot and by the time the afternoon rolled around the temperature outside matched the inside. The only thing left to do was lay on the living room floor listening for, “tink,” which meant the jars were sealed and the jars were cooling down.