It's canning season and I'm remembering how my mother used to can fruit during the summer. She would gather as many of the neighborhood kids as she could, and get them to help her with the enormous task of canning pears, apricots, plums and peaches into jam, jelly and preserves. It was a monumental task.
Months before canning season, she would look for sales on sugar. When she found a sale, she would buy heavy (in my mind) 10 pound sacks of sugar. She never wanted to pay more than 79 cents for a sack of sugar. When sugar went on sale, and it was less than 79 cents, my sister would buy a sack, I would buy a sack, dad would buy a sack and of course mom would buy a sack too. (I guess there was a limit to the number of sacks one person could buy.) When the summer came, she had 20-30 sacks of sugar squirreled away in the cabinet that also held hundreds of shiny pint and quart jars. She had several huge pots that were used for canning hidden in another cabinet, along with a sieve, special jar tongs and wide-mouthed funnels.
In the backyard were 2 trees, a tall plum tree and a shorter apricot tree. When the fruit was ripe, dad would climb the trees and pick the harvest. About the same time, we would drive into the hot valley and buy lugs of peaches and pears. I remember my dad bargaining with the farmer, making sure he got the best price. The drive home was in a car that smelled of fresh fruit but we were not allowed to eat it then, it was for canning.
When the fruit was perfect, canning time began. First thing my mother did was pull down the kitchen shades. The kitchen had 7 large windows and each had a World War 2 era black out shade that did a wonderful job of keeping the kitchen cooler. I loved looking at the shades because they had tiny cracks and pinpoint holes in them, and light would enter the room and make pretty patterns on the walls and ceiling.
The kitchen table was spread out with as many leaves as she could put in and it was covered with newspaper. At each place at the table there was a bowl, a paring knife and a chopping board. The neighborhood kids would start to appear about 9 o'clock and they all knew what to do as they had been trained by my mother. We would wash our hands, put on an apron, and get a batch of cleaned fruit and start cutting it in half then taking out the pit. We would throw the pit into the middle of the table where there was a bucket and laugh when we hit the bucket. All the while my mother would play school games with us. We practiced multiplication tables, mental addition and subtraction, we played states and capitals, we did science experiments, we sang songs, we laughed as we halved and pitted hundreds of pieces of fruit. My mom had everyone involved in the process and she made it fun and interesting.
At a certain point, my mother would collect the fruit and start to cook it. The kids were not involved in the cooking but we were involved with measuring the precious sugar. We learned all about fractions by using them in the kitchen. Sometimes my girlfriends and I would get into a "giggle" and my mother would look at us her certain way, and the giggle would stop. This was serious business as we were canning fruit for the rest of the year.
After the fruit was cooked it would be poured into the jars using the wide mouthed funnel. Then the Ball or Kerr lids were put into place and the filled jars would be lowered into one of the huge canning pots filled with just the right amount of boiling water. Too much boiling water meant we had a mess on the stove and the floor. After what seemed like an eternity, the jars would be lifted from the boiling water and placed on the counter where they cooled. My mother would look at the lids to make sure they were sealed. She liked the Ball lids the best because they indented when they were sealed. It was more difficult to tell if the Kerr lids were "working." Sometimes she could not get the brand of lid that she wanted and she had to settle for something else. She was never happy when that happened.
The special treat was plum jelly. I loved plum jelly. It was rich and purple and sweet and gooey. We only made plum jelly when we had a bumper crop of plums. I don't remember much of the process but I do remember using the sieve. My mother would dig the sieve out of the back of the canning cabinet, sterilize it, and line the inside of it with 3 layers of pure white cheesecloth. Then a bit of the cooked plums would be dolloped into the sieve and I would get a chance to stir it through the sieve to produce the sweet syrup that would become jelly. All the kids would get a change to stir the plums through the sieve. I remember it as difficult as we were small and we had to stand on a little step to reach to the top of the sieve and the container underneath it. When all the plums had been processed the jelly would be sealed in pint and quart bottles and cooked. The bounty of our hard work was a piece of toast with the sweet homemade jelly. There was nothing better than plum jelly. I remember removing the cheesecloth from the sieve. It was as purple as the jelly, then my mom would say, that's why we don't use dish towels, as that purple will never come off.
Canning season lasted about 2 weeks. My mother had every kid in the neighborhood working for her and none of the other mothers complained. The other moms knew that the kids were safe. It gave them a chance to do their chores without having a couple of kids underfoot. We were not "chained" to the kitchen as we came there with smiles on our faces. We worked hard but we played too. My mother made it a game and it was a magical time for us. When each day was done, we would clean up the table and out would come several decks of cards, one for each child. We ended every day with couple of breakneck sessions of "eleven solitaire." That's double solitaire played with a deck of cards for each kid. This was a speedy game as we were all trying to get as many cards into the "aces piles" in the middle of the table. When a game was over, we would count the cards to see who had the most cards in the aces and that was the winner. There were no prizes. The cards would then be separated into their own decks and another game would begin. My mom fed the kids lunch and we had snacks and drinks throughout the day too. We were cared for and loved and we all knew we were doing something useful.
All too soon it was dinner time and the kids would go to their own homes and my mom, sister and I had to get dinner ready for dad.
It was a different time, and a different place. It was a time when mothers stayed at home taking care of the kids; and kids stayed near home to play on the street. We had bicycles and skates and neighborhood baseball games after dinner; and for 2 special weeks every summer we canned.
