Pears for Winter

Today was canning day for pears. We usually hoard these canned jewels to last through the winter. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing the jars of fruit on the storage room shelf.

I have so many memories of canning for winter in Penrose in my childhood. First, in the late spring, Louise, Dwight, and sometimes I had to clean out the leftovers from the cellar. The example of our grandmother, who would can fresh food every summer and fall, and then eat the oldest things on the shelf, waiting for the new food to get old before using it really impressed Mother. There were never any leftovers; the cellar shelves were cleaned out. We dumped anything that was left over, washed jars, and prepared for the new, fresh food to be canned and preserved for winter. Everything was canned - vegetables, fruits, jams, jellies, pickles, etc. After WWII, when freezer lockers became available in town, we froze some vegetables, especially peas, and I didn't have to try to gag down canned peas any more. Frozen peas were deliciously more like fresh peas. To add to the cellar, all the root crops were harvested in their time, potatoes, and carrots, especially. (Carrots were covered with sand to keep them from dehydrating.) Cabbages were picked, and rather than making sauerkraut, they were kept for a time in the cellar. Baskets of Wealthy apples that we picked up from the ground in the orchards of the Andersons and the Harts were kept there for a couple of months. (Mother called them "windfalls", and said they were sweeter. The ones that we didn't can as applesauce were kept for eating. After school on a nice autumn day, one of the first stops would be the cellar to get an apple. If there was a worm sharing it, he was quickly cut out, and the rest was delicious. Or Mother might give us a treat for breakfast and fry some in the cast iron frying pan with butter in the skillet, and some brown sugar sprinkled on top. It was more like dessert than breakfast.

However, the process of canning then was very different from today's conveniences. The morning would begin by picking produce, or sorting fruit. The pitcher pump was kept busy pumping water, as buckets were carried to the house. Water was heated on the stove or in the reservoir at the end of the wood-coal range. Bottles were brought up from the cellar, the two dishpans came out, and we washed and drained many bottles. If the produce had to be pressure cooked to be safe, the old pressure cooker was on the stove, heating water, and ready for the prepared vegetables. (Tomatoes were still acidic enough that we could water bath the jars, as well as all of the fruit.) Then the big copper boiler full of water would be heating on the stove. (Mother had constructed a wooden lathe base so that she could fill it full of jars to save time.) We would set up an assembly line - each child had a job to do. The kitchen would get hotter and hotter - all doors and windows would be open, with screens keeping out the flies and other bugs. Exhaustion came at the end of the day. The reward was a cellar full of food to help us get through the winter.

Today? What a difference. Ron backs all of the vehicles out of the garage. He sets up the Camp Chef for the cooker, and begins to heat the water. I prepare the fruit, (bottles are washed in the dishwasher), bottle the produce, take the jars out to the cooker, lower them in and set the timer. Then I prepare the next batch while that one cooks. So different! (So why am I so tired at the end of the day?) There is still a wonderful feeling of satisfaction when I look at the beautiful jars on the shelf. And we are more ready for winter. Some things never change.