'Tis the Season

I have memories of my mom spending long days in the kitchen every September. I would come home from school and there she would be, peeling peaches, pears or tomatoes or filling jars with brightly colored jam. I could tell she was tired, but the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was pull out a paring knife and start peeling.

Lo and behold, within minutes of throwing down my backpack, I would hear her plead, "Pleeeease help me. I want to get done with this SOOO bad. I need your hands. You love to eat it, too, you know."

She was right. One of my favorite snacks was cottage cheese with cold, juicy, canned peaches or pears. And toast would not be the same with store-bought jam. So I would begrudgingly head to the kitchen and start peeling away.

As much as I would rather have been taking a nap, something great would happen during those hours of peeling, stuffing and processing. Mom and I (and Michelle or Jenny, depending on who was around that year) would start chatting away. We would talk about school, friends, or whatever. It was a great bonding time. And there was something so beautiful about seeing all those jars of fruit lined up on the counter, ready to go into the storage room.

I never thought I'd get into canning like my mom does. I thought it would be too hard to figure out or something. But way back 14 years ago when we were first married and living in student housing, my girlfriend, DeEtte taught me how, since I never really paid attention to how Mom would do it. Suddenly I was very interested, since we were living on about $800 per month and DeEtte's mom would give us free peaches from her trees. We also had a little plot in a community garden, so we had a few tomatoes to make salsa with. I remember her telling me how much joy she feels when she sees all those jars of food on her shelves and she knows she produced them herself. And when I got to fill our little cupboards with a few quarts of home-canned food, I knew just what she meant. It was such a satisfying feeling.



Landon and Sadie actually enjoyed helping me with the tomatoes. Sadie loves anything messy, so this was right up her alley. She had given up on me by the time Jeremy snuck in with the camera. And for the record, I made Landon put on this apron so his shirt would stay white. :)

This year we have been participating in a big community vegetable garden. (I keep meaning to post some pictures of that. I'll put them at the end of this post.) Since money is T-I-G-H-T this fall (thanks to the good 'ol recession,) canning has been my friend once again. I've canned pickles, spaghetti sauce, salsa, tomatoes, peaches (at DeEtte's house, just like old times...thanks to her incredibly giving mom) and peach jam. I've frozen green beans, corn, blackberries and blackberry jam. Wow, that was fun to list all that! I wonder how many hours that took when you add in the breaks I had to take to nurse the baby, take forgotten lunches to school, change the laundry from the washer to the dryer, answer the phone...

Ahhh, but the food storage room and freezer have never been prettier! The Lord is so good to us. He truly is.

Here are a few pictures of our garden back in May and June, before the weeds started taking over. It was so pretty. Now it's a nice big weed patch. But we were still able to get TONS of food from it.

My friend, Angela painstakingly watering the squash plants. Next year we will have some kind of watering system set up. The area behind Angela is not part of our garden. It belongs to a farmer.

Everyone planting and weeding their little hearts out.

The spring crop.

We met on Monday nights and would sometimes have a little dinner before working in the garden. I stayed home a lot because Eli was so tiny and it was usually too cool and breezy outside for him, but the rest of the family went. We were surprised how much the kids actually enjoyed it. They complained sometimes, but they LOVED seeing the seeds come up, and loved eating the food even more. It always amazed them when something would grow and we could actually eat it. This was our "experimental" year with the garden. We hope next year will be a little better,and the year after that even better. It's a great concept. We are grateful to Bob Carlisle for donating his land for the cause.