Project of the Day

Every winter, when life gets busy with school and extracurricular activities, I look longingly towards summer. "Life won't be as busy when summer gets here," I tell myself.  "Without school to think about each day and without choir and violin lessons for the boys, our schedule will be much lighter.  Won't it be great?"  

I conveniently forget about the great time-consuming item in the good ol' summertime:

Food preservation.

I am blessed beyond measure by the fact that I have land in which to have a garden, a husband who does the gardening (and loves it), sufficient rainfall to make the plants grow, and an abundant harvest.  I'm quite sure that this year has been the most productive for us so far, and I rejoice in the stockpile of food that is accumulating in our freezers and in the cellar.  Rows of home-canned peaches and green beans, jars of strawberry jam, cartons of blueberries, bags of onions, and so much more.  Why, it's enough to make a homemaker feel positively rich!

But all of that doesn't happen with just a snap of the fingers.  Oh no, each item of food that gets put away for the winter is a result of work.

It's good work though: happy work, meaningful work, makes-you-feel-like-you-did-something-great work.  And often in our household, it's we-did-it-together work.

Like yesterday, for example, the project of the day was chopping bell peppers in preparation for freezing them.  Our pepper plants are doing wonderfully, and we had quite a pile of peppers that needed preserving.  So yesterday morning, I gathered the boys around the table, and we got to work.

 Even Shav got to help, using a pair of scissors to cut the peppers into bite-size pieces.

 From the little ones...

 ...on up to the big ones...

 ...we all pitched in to help.  Many hands make light work, after all!  :)

 When Jeff arrived home for his lunch break, there was no lunch on the table, just piles of bell peppers.  That didn't seem to bother him.  He sat right down, got out a knife, and went to work; and with his help, the job was quickly completed.  Not for the first time, I gave thanks for a husband who's willing to jump in and help out...and with a great attitude, to boot!

After lunch, since the peppers were taken care of, I got to work on the second project of the day: canning tomatoes.  That time, my mother was my helper; but I didn't even take the time to get out the camera and take any pictures.  With no documentation to prove it, you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that she is a very good helper.  :)

And so, the circle of life continues to spin.  The woman who taught me to cook and can, the one who was in charge and who let me help her, has now handed the reins to me, and her Ball Blue Book currently resides on a shelf in my kitchen because I'm the one who looks in it to be reminded of how long to leave the jars of diced tomatoes in the hot water bath, for example.  Meanwhile, a bunch of boys is coming along, being the helpers at this stage of life, learning by doing, being a part of the family as we preserve food together.  Unless the Lord returns, that wheel will keep spinning; and someday I'll lay down my role of being in charge and, hopefully, if I have the ability and humility to do so, become the helper again.

Did I ever mention that preserving food makes me a trifle nostalgic?  :)  As I stand at my kitchen sink to peel and dice peaches before packing them in glass canning jars that might very well be older than I am, I feel myself to be part of a long line of Women Who Can.  My mother did it, and before her was my grandmother who also canned.  I remember my great-grandmother, who lived to be in her upper 90s; she canned, as did her mother before her, I've been told.  How far back does the line go?

Even more poignantly, how far forward will it continue?

There's nothing holy, in and of itself, about canning; and if my children live lives - as I did for a number of years - away from the country and away from the art of gardening and preserving food, it will be fine.  But the act of getting food, preparing it, laying it in store for the winter is a ritual nearly as old as time itself; and even if my children participate in this ritual by stocking up at Costco when a storm threatens, they will still be a part of it.

It is a weighty thing, this sense of history stretching behind and the future unfolding before.

And all of this comes to my mind just because we froze some peppers and canned some tomatoes!  I told you preserving food makes me nostalgic.  ;-)

~ me, when I was just a few years old, helping to pit cherries at my grandparent's farm in Pennsylvania ~