Today, I’m canning with a friend. On the menu? Salsa, dilly beans, peach freezer jam and just possibly dill pickles. Not too shabby. Due to a low-tomato crop this year, I haven’t had the near-daily process of “squeezing and freezing” tomatoes from the garden. That meant… gulp… a trip to the farm market to (oh, I’m so embarrassed to say this) buy tomatoes. There. I’ve just ruined my whole reputation. And since I did, I’ll make it worse: I also bought the peppers, the peaches and the cucumbers. What didn’t I have to buy? Dill, garlic, onions and some of the hot peppers.
So, this year, canning feels just a titch less authentic than it usually does. Normally, it’s all about me walking into the backyard, picking what I need (or what’s ready to be picked, which is usually more than I need) and making good use of what Mother Nature provided. This year, I’m doing it backwards. I decided what I wanted to can and got the supplies.
But if I’m totally honest, that does – just a bit – represent my yuppie homesteading lifestyle. Most of the time, we live as authentically as we can. We cut down our own trees in the back yard, de-limb them, cut them up, chop them, stack them and then burn them. This year? Well, it was an Ironman year and we didn’t have a lot of time to harvest trees. We will be calling our buddy Shane, who has a firewood business, to drop off a few cords of wood to add to our small supply.
There are lots of other examples, too. I certainly buy groceries every week (or several times a week candidly). Yes, I cook from scratch but again, I didn’t grow that cilantro and I certainly didn’t raise and harvest that chicken. But there are other things where we are completely authentic. Who else builds a full closet in their house renovation to dedicate to recycling? We also re-use and re-purpose what we can. My husband used old scrap wood to build a garlic dryer. I enjoy nothing better than visiting a local farm and picking my own fruit than picking up a pretty pre-packaged container at the store.
But I’ll be honest here. Today’s canning experience will be fun and happy because I’m sharing it with a friend. But, it will also be a twinge hollow. Canning is a necessary process around this house not just because we like to bottle a little summer to enjoy later in the year, but because we are bottling some of our own summer to enjoy. Normally, we have to can or the produce will go bad. This year, we are choosing to can just to enjoy the local food. It isn’t as rewarding.
When I think back, however, to when my mother and grandmother canned, I’m also reminded that neither really had a big garden. Yes, gramma did at one point but as she and my grandfather aged, they often traded the garden for simply buying at the farm market what they needed. With my mom, we never had a garden big enough to can the things she put away and we certainly didn’t have fruit trees. Instead, she and my dad often went to the local farm auction and bought bushels of produce to can. Back then, it didn’t feel any less authentic that we didn’t grow it ourselves. Instead, it was about having locally grown, good food that we could enjoy in the winter. For my grandparents? It was partially the same. However, they also couldn’t have afforded to buy all of that food already prepared from the grocery store. Buying it when it was plentiful and less expensive in its raw form and then preserving it themselves was a way to enjoy what they liked and make ends meet.
So, today, as I can with a friend and celebrate putting away local food for our families to enjoy this winter, I have to pivot just slightly from my absolutist view that one cans what one grows and only slightly supplements when they absolutely have to from the farm market. This year, we are doing the canning yuppie homesteader style – mostly purchased but local, raw ingredients which will taste better and ultimately be still made with our own hands, even if we didn’t grow it.
The Yuppie Homesteader 