Autumn

I just love this time of year. The heat of the days and evenings begins to wan. The colors of fall are beginning to appear. Harvests (even if they aren't mine) are being brought in. In my childhood, this was family time. Everyone had a job to do as we picked, shelled, shucked, cut, diced and cooked and then canned. The aromas coming out of the kitchen at all the homes of my family members and the trading of fruits and vegetables amongst us and the community. My father always over planted so that the widowed ladies that lived around us that were elderly and unable to do much gardening of their own could still keep up their own canning traditions and share them with us.

It always amazed me that we were, as a family and a community, closer at this time than we were at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Getting together to eat is not the same as getting together to survive, I suppose. A rainbow of relishes, jellies, jams and preserves, vegetables, fruits, all lined up in order in our store shed with two 14 cubic foot freezers with all the meat that we could stand. We were fairly self sufficient. We bred rabbits and cattle and had hunting dogs. My uncle had duck and turkey and hogs. We traded. The boys would go saddle up and go hog hunting. The little kids would go out to one of the channels and set bullfrog traps. My great uncle would pick up some of the men and they would go gator hunting. And we all shared and traded. Where we had peaches and plums, one of my uncles had apples and potatoes and peanuts. My grandmother had the best greens you could ever lay eyes on because there was a small stream that ran at the back of her house so she never had to worry about watering them. And man they were as green as green could be. She aways had a large paper shopping bag full for someone to come and bring her fire wood for her cook stove.

And then the duck, goose, quail, turkey and chickens. And the catfish and the white perch. Thankfully, a very good friend of the family was a meat cutter and it cost us perhaps a quarter of our kill for him to cut it up and package it for us in the days before vacuum sealing. And he would have the best tasting heirloom tomatoes.

I miss those days of a community family but it is difficult for me to leave land of the 24 hour store where I drive for 7 minutes from my driveway to work. It is hard for me not to want to go back. I do want to go back. Simpler lifestyle. Even as it is, my father was telling me the other night someone brought him a deer in trade for half a hog he killed. His freezers are overflowing. But they can't afford basic necessity. Milk and sliced bread and butter. He had to let his chickens and quail go because they couldn't afford the feed and he isn't on a large enough piece of property to grow it for them. It saddens me to know the way that my great grandfather taught all of us seems to be slipping away.

I'm determined to have that back.

House hunting with a solar package is a must. I have a bit on this and we will go where ever it is that we must go to make it happen. No more gas fed objects. I've found a new tiller I want. It weighs less than a gas powered one and it has more accessories with life time warranty for the tines reasonably priced. Raised beds and hoop houses. Gardening was a tradition when I was a child, now it is becoming one again. My children are excited about growing their own food (if we can keep all the critters from eating it first).

I first realized that we needed to move forward when I had the thought of getting a shed and getting a solar power set on it so that we could power our lights and hydro system from that instead of paying out the yin yang for it. My hand is almost at the top and I feel the goal with my fingertips but so much has to happen before I have it in my hand.

How do I have that family community once again? I can't grow it all alone. Where is the fun in that?

Preserving The Harvest

I think that it is important to remember where I came from. Endless hours of harvesting, shelling peas and beans, shucking corn, cutting down peeled tomatoes and peppers, onions. Canning tomato relish both green and red. Putting up quart after pint of fresh vegetables. A rainbow of jellies and jams. Fresh cream straight out of the utter being skimmed and skimmed again, endless pouring milk from one container to another, skim and then there is enough fresh cream to cook with, to have on the side so that my father can start his unhealthy journey into high cholestrol in later life.

I remember how to do it, even though I only did small things, I was there for the entire process. But even with those memories, I'm still researching for better ways or even some coaching on the old ways. I came across this place for How to Can, Freeze, Dry and Preserve Any Fruit or Vegetable at Home. Nifty site that is safely at a 8 on the greener meter. It's easily navagated and has an amazing wealth of good information on how to do what our grandparents did and some of our parents, too.

I'm enjoying this site as it is giving me answers for things I never really knew why they happened in the process, only that it did happen. I'm gonna be taking lots of notes from a much wiser woman!