“Catching Up” on Canning

I caught up on canning yesterday (only because neither Richard nor I visited the garden yesterday). So, yesterday morning, I decided to bring samples of our canned creations to those who have been our greatest support network: To Mamie – Cherries Jubilee Sauce and some okra and tomatoes for her friend. To Jack – Carrots from Mamie’s garden, some field peas, and a jar of pickled beets. To Charlie and Deborah – Carrots, red and white potatoes, maque choux, green beans, and field peas. To our next-door-neighbor Shirley – A jar of okra and tomatoes that I had promised her at the spaghetti dinner benefit where I heard her and her family (the Daltons) sing last Saturday. To the Baerreis Family – wine and liquor bottles. I know --That’s not a canned creation, but I’ll explain later.

You may think we were kind of stingy with Mamie considering all Mamie does for us. But Mamie has dozens of cans of produce in her basement, and she’s began making her own okra and tomatoes last year after we gave her a sample. Mamie wasn’t home, so I dropped the goodies off in her egg refrigerator and went to the garden. I picked okra and tomatoes, and then headed over to Jack’s.

I had to return a notebook to Jack, and we sat on the porch discussing his recently published book, as well as his more recent writing about corn in Coker Creek. He also spoke of the wild hog that ate all his watermelons in his and his brother Charles’ big garden. Jack’s gold-hunter friend Cotton (who also hunts wild game) had spent the night in the field watching for that hog, but had fallen asleep on the job. As Cotton slept, the hog had come and gone; so Jack thought he ought to go check his field.

As I prepared to leave, Jack (as usual) offered to give me more tomatoes and peppers – an offer I can never pass up. I told him about the green pepper jelly I made with his last batch of peppers, two batches of which have to be reworked because they didn’t set. We agreed that reworking can wait until after all of the fresh produce is taken care of.

We picked all his red banana peppers to add to the ones already in my freezer from last year. These will become red pepper jelly. Now, pepper jelly is new to the mountain folks. They make jelly from every fruit, including tomatoes, but Mamie told me that the first time she read a recipe for pepper jelly she thought it was a joke. Then again, okra and tomatoes was new to them, and they sure have developed a taste for it.

As we spoke about all the okra and tomatoes I hoped to can this season, Jack asked if I wanted to go with him to his big field to pick okra. This field is about a half mile down the Cooper Hollow Road from Jack’s house. For a year, I had been meaning to have Jack take me for a wildflower walk. We grabbed a bag and started walking. The bag was full of okra when we returned.

As I headed to Charlie and Deborah’s my van looked like a produce vendor’s truck. Since Charlie and Deborah had given me several cases of canning jars – and since they host a bluegrass pickin’ session (to which we are invited) every other Saturday -- we thought it was only fair to share some of our garden bounty with them. Placing potatoes, peppers (from Jack), carrots, maque choux, and fields peas on their new granite countertop, I marveled once again at the great job Charlie did in remodeling their home.

Charlie is a real mountain man, cutting timber on his property and dressing it out for his building needs with his own sawmill. A great storyteller, he regaled me with the story of a realtor who used to take people to look at Coker Creek property, telling them about the gold-mining and panning history of the area. As the prospects walked with the realtor along the creeks, the realtor would remove a piece of fool’s gold from his pocket. Bending down and acting as if he found it in the creek, he’d announce, “Look at that. That’s the biggest nugget I’ve ever found.” The prospect would immediately sign a contract for the land. He also raises several kinds of grape. I was hoping to collect some of his concord and fox grapes for grape jam. Much to my chagrin, he informed me that all his grapes had rotted and fallen off the vine as soon as they ripened.

On the way “downtown” to pick up some prescriptions, I ran by Designs by Baerreis to drop off the wine and liquor bottles. Martha, Phil and Elisabeth Baerreis make wonderful treasures out of wood, glass, and clay. Their hardwood hair toys, sculptural boxes, kitchenware, toys and puzzle boxes, as well as their fused glass jewelry, and other glass and pottery objects de art and photography are prized by collectors around the world. They aforementioned bottles are turned from ordinary recyclables to unique cheese boards in the creative hands of Elisabeth. The Baerreises are also gardening at Mamie’s, so we traded garden tales and recipes.

My last stop was next door at Shirley’s. Shirley’s house is on land that used to be part of the parcel we bought. Her daddy was Rube Dalton, a well-known mountain musician. Shirley grew up on the land that we now own. I remembered that she had talked about the root cellar on out property, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask her advice on root cellaring in our cellar.

She gave me advice, and we talked for a while about her family’s musical talents. I presented her with her first-ever jar of okra and tomatoes to try and asked her if she knew anybody who had extra red grapes. She called her brother who said that the raccoons had gotten to his grapes, and that her own grapes had already been harvested. It was with a heavy heart that I realized that I wouldn’t be able to provide Richard with his favorite jam this year.

As I prepared to depart, I offered her some of my fresh tomatoes, which she accepted -- saying her tomatoes and her brother’s tomatoes were finished bearing. Shirley then excused herself, asking me to wait a minute. Oh, joy of joys! Upon her return, she held a precious jewel out to me – a jar of her mountain grape jam. My winter larder will now be complete.

And then, it was home to can tomatoes.

Garden Bounty Beddy-By

Harvesting of summer vegetables is almost complete. Now we have to master the art of the root cellar. Our property has a sure enough root cellar on it – even though it could be argued that it’s not a cellar since it’s above ground. We used it as the world’s biggest doghouse for the world’s biggest dog (Think a white version of Clifford.) until the dirt floor got saturated during our very rainy winter. Now that our dog has a cave in Richard’s work shed, we can rethink the root cellar.

So, I bought a book on root cellaring. Who knew that, not only are vegetables rather particular about their growing conditions, they’re also particular about where you put them to beddy-by. It seems that our carrots need a bedroom that’s cold and very moist. Our white and red potatoes like cold and moist, but never freezing -- and not too wet. None of these arrangements will do for our butternut squash and sweet potatoes; they like to rest in moderate warmth with very low humidity. In my family, we didn’t have separate bedrooms for each kid. Now I have to create separate bedrooms for my vegetables.

We thought we solved the problem of the things that like just cool and somewhat moist conditions (cucumbers, sweet peppers, watermelons, and ripe tomatoes) by either canning or eating them. But canned vegetables have their own set of rules. They not only require cool (but not freezing) temperatures, they also like darkness. And if you store them with your white potatoes, the tops will rust right through.

And the rules for canning…Oye Vey! Tomatoes can be either raw packed or hot packed If you hot pack them, they take less processing time than if you raw pack them. Depending on how acidic the tomatoes are, and what ingredients you add to the tomatoes, you may require either hot water bath processing or pressure canning. If you’re pressure canning, you must know the altitude of your kitchen and whether your pressure canner has a weighted-gauge or dial-gauge to ascertain correct processing times. And little did I know that you have to let the pressure come down gradually, or all your canned product will boil out of the jars. Talk about “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

Mamie has a real cellar and a real garage for storage of her garden bounty. We’re trying to improvise with what we have. The butternut squash is now proudly displayed above our kitchen cabinets. Since our root cellar is above ground, we think we need a mattress and blanket to regulate the temperature of our “taters”, so they’re currently in mesh bags waiting for Richard to build a crib full of straw for them. The carrots are in our RV refrigerator. We’re considering making them into carrot cakes and dilled julienne carrots, then freezing them. And Richard is designing an insulated shelving unit for root cellaring of our canned goods. We have until first frost (usually mid-October) to create a sweet potato nursery.

Mamie was talking about some folks who raised chickens and foster children. She said that the chickens had nothing to drink but muddy water and that they could hardly eat because their beaks were trimmed too short. She observed that anybody who couldn’t raise a chicken shouldn’t be allowed to raise a child. I’m beginning to think that parenting classes should start with the care of a potato – or a tomato.

Harvesting In the Holler

Ah, the joys of home grown vegetables… Not at our home, mind you, but at the home of almost-90-year-old Mamie Murphy.

It all began when Richard declared that he didn’t think I should plant a vegetable garden last spring unless I planned to stay home this summer to take care of it. As you know, I’m very commitment phobic when it comes to committing to stay home. What to do?

I became enamored of Mamie when I interviewed her for a Coker Creek newsletter article about the history of the Coker Creek post office. After spending 50 years as postmistress, she retired to a life of selling eggs and raising and canning produce -- along with attending church, various club meetings and cooking for a vast array of family and friends.

One early spring morning, she mentioned to me that, with the economy the way it is, she thinks we need to reinstitute victory gardens. She said that with her increasing age and her several years’ worth of canned vegetables in her basement, she didn’t really need to grow any vegetables for herself. She sure would like to have other people plant gardens on her property. I suggested that we could help her with her garden in exchange for her gardening knowledge and half the produce. Richard was agreeable, and the game was on.

Now, I was used to the South Louisiana growing season where we could plant many things in March and April and harvest until Thanksgiving. March and April in Coker Creek, the ground is prepared and cool weather broccoli, cabbage and spinach are planted. Mother’s Day comes and goes before any summer vegetables are put in Coker Creek soil, and everything better be in cans well before Halloween. This leaves a lot to do in a very short time. We were going to have a full workload. “We” meaning Richard.

My Uncle died in late March in Louisiana. Scott’s kids in Mississippi were on spring break in mid-April. Richard tilled and planted while I attended the funeral and squeezed on the grandkids. In early June, my niece Nikki and her daughter came for a two-week visit. Richard weeded and staked while I socialized. Mid-June, we both traveled for two weeks. We came back to weeds to pull and cucumbers, yellow squash, onions and beans to pick. Richard kept the garden going while I had a nervous breakdown.In early July, my niece Ginette -- with her four children, along with Rachel and her girls came to visit. Once again, Richard toiled while I was otherwise occupied.

In late July, we began to harvest onions, corn and green peppers. We took these with us when we went to Louisiana and Mississippi to, once again, visit with family and friends before school started. With the addition of a little butter, cream and fresh Louisiana crabmeat, what a feast of corn and crab chowder this bounty made!

Upon our return, we had house guests from Florida and an overflowing garden. Terry Sue and Theresa Ann brought a gift of cooking pears with them. Since a late frost last spring killed any hope of Coker Creek pears this fall, I was thrilled. Their first night, we introduced “the Theresas” to the bluegrass “pickin’” that’s the center of our Coker Creek cultural experience. The next day, we pressed our guests into service as part of our itinerate labor pool. We picked bushels of beans, pots of peas, carloads of corn, several squash, a peck of peppers, a bit of okra and tomatoes, and one watermelon. Our reward that night was a fabulously fresh vegetable plate with corn muffins and ice cream sundaes.

No sooner did this set of guests leave with a carload of produce, but we had another couple arrive. Holly and Don helped us de-cob the corn, pop out the peas, string the beans, and eat the okra. They departed with a bushel of beans and several ears of corn. We closed the door behind them and headed to Mamie’s to dig potatoes (both red and white), thin carrots, and pull up beets – and we had more beans and tomatoes to pick and process.

All of August, We’ve picked, pulled and pickled. Our freezer is bursting with maque choux, field peas, and green beans. Our pantry is pregnant with pickled beets, pepper jelly, tons of tomatoes, a bounty of beans and a bit of ginger, cran-pear chutney. Meanwhile, I’m researching recipes for butternut squash while waiting for the rain to stop long enough for me to harvest more okra, tomatoes and carrots.

Maybe I’ll cut up one of our watermelons to snack on while I wait…