Canning and Pondering

Can-Do Canning

The clock has struck 11:00 pm as I write this and it is truly the first time that we have stopped all day… and I have just been told I still have a clog in a downstairs sink to deal with--hooray!

I can’t really put a finger on the moment that we lost control of our life here at the swamp farm, but I still have whiplash from being propelled from 0 to 6000 in no time at all! It has been this crazy for so long I can’t remember when it wasn’t. I suppose it started in the early spring? Or was it after the monsoons of the late part of April and May? Or wait, could it have been when the first chicken eggs hatched or perhaps the quail? I just don’t remember and this frenzied pace has become so much a part of my life now that it seems freakishly normal.

We canned green beans today. We didn’t get near as many done as we would have liked but I did get a real cool burn on my arm and that will surely leave a scar, and that is a very manly thing. When it comes to guy-cool, give me a well-placed scar over having a tattoo any day. Scars just say “I am reckless, that’s right, I reach for the farthest rung on the monkey bars, my car had 5-spoke Cragar wheels and Cherry Bomb mufflers, and I don’t wait no danged 30 minutes after I eat to go swimming.” Scars always indicate a tough man. Or at least a foolish man who hopefully knows better next time?

So back to the beans… Sherry and our intrepid helper Tracy picked, tipped, tailed and snapped what I would guess amounts to 2 bushels of long, straight, thick and tender new-growth Jade-variety green beans. Bless their little hearts! They worked like dogs to the end.

As they worked and talked together at the kitchen table with beans flying right and left, it felt good to me as I readied the pressure cookers. Somehow our farm-life canning activity made me feel like we still have a foot dangling, albeit precariously, in old-fashioned tradition while the rest of us is caught up in the modern world. We as a country are dangerously close to forgetting about the value of doing old-fashioned work together, such as putting food by, tilling the earth, tending some chickens or maybe a pig or two. I fear we will be caught some day with no one left to pass on the skills needed to thrive if ever the power grid goes black. Oh, we could adjust, but it would take awhile and we simply are not set up with the raw ingredients or tools to thrive in the case of a long-term blackout, or worse, a food and water shortage.

We could probably figure out how to make a candle, but what about wicks or the wax? How about a making crock pickles? Could you make corn meal or flour? Even if you grow the wheat and corn, could you grind it? And more importantly, where would you get the seed to even start?

I’m just saying that for me to see those girls keeping a tradition alive, and at this point not a cost effective one, makes me feel our grandparents would say, “Well done kids, you make us proud.”

It also makes me feel unbridled from the mega-marts, big corporations, and to some degree, the government. All of these are, to some extent, enabling us as a nation to be nothing but consumers--not innovators, not producers, not self-sufficient self-reliant citizens. For a brief moment this afternoon I felt unshackled from relying on other resources; I was making my own.

I don’t want to be broke, bridled, and branded; I’m a wild Cayuse and have the burn on my arm to prove it.

Now, where did those monkey bars go? I’m feeling dangerous right now and I’m done talk’n, --Matt