37 half pints+10 pints= 5 cranky kids
(I am surprisingly good at math)
On Tuesday of this week I went to pick silvanberries with the two Lisas and all of our children combined (six for the picking and then Maddy went to play with a friend so we had five for the canning). We went to the Efimov berry farm near Woodburn. I would have written about this earlier in the week but I promised myself I would first write an article to submit to my local paper. An exercise in restraint and humility. I don't actually think my local paper prints free-lance articles but the writer for the home and garden section did say she's interested in covering more on canning and preserving and would like to talk to me next week. That's pretty cool.
So now that they've declined publishing my slightly more conservative article (isn't it weird how the newspaper never prints swear words even in editorial pieces?)* I am free to tell you all about our day of berry picking and canning. In spite of the fact that I find large numbers of little people pretty stressful, I had a lot of fun and said little people only required periodical refereeing. They were cute little buttons picking berries and smooshing them all over their pretty faces and dresses. I have to say that I'm very fond of all of these little people. Even the bigger more tidy ones who aren't pictured above. (Maddy, Rex, and Max).
It took us at least two hours to pick thirty five pounds of silvanberries. Did I not already tell you about these berries? Oh my. They are so delicious! The charming Ana Efimov (who dresses in modest clothes and a headscarf that make her look like a Russian immigrant from the turn of the century, you know I almost fainted with excitement! Uh, I should mention here that she doesn't do it for the fashion, but for religious reasons.) isn't even positive what was crossed to produce silvanberries. She thinks it may be a blackberry/tayberry cross. They are huge, juicy (so very delicate when ripe) and have a flavor that captures the musky wildness of a blackberry with the tang and zip of a raspberry. I'm in love with this berry.
When children pick berries with you you have to pick through the berries later (when they're not looking) to remove all the moldy ones. The most helpful child is not as discerning as us seasoned adults. This work that you see here is messy. We milled the berries to remove most of the seeds and then cooked them down with sugar to make jam.
We cooked each batch for forty minutes. I'm still not sure if we ended up with mostly sauce or if it all set up. It's difficult to know until a couple of days later. In either case, it will be delicious! It's really quite fun to be so industrious with people you love spending time with. Way better than a party in my opinion.
The rewards of canning are so tangible. I love tangible rewards. We watched the lines of jars multiply into the night. We didn't finish the last batch until almost nine pm. The kids were getting quite cranky. Well, mine especially.
I am going to list a few good reasons to can or otherwise preserve your own foods:
- Because it's FUN!!! (many more serious and grown up reasons to follow)
- At a time when I often feel powerless about the things going on in the world, canning gives me a feeling of control. It makes me feel like I'm productive, capable, independent (if all trucking stops, I'll still be able to put produce up for the winter), and it connects me with the past as well which makes me feel a sense of continuity and flow.
- Food preserving is a skill and a science that has been practiced for thousands of years. By learning to do it and teaching others to do it too, we are all preserving extremely important skills. It used to be that everyone knew how to do it. If we all just let corporations make and preserve our food for us we lose a lot of knowledge that is pretty fundamental. Food preserving is a life skill. Like building shelter. Like clothing ourselves. Civilization would not have been able to industrialize without people having learned to preserve food against lean times and long voyages. This isn't a cute little old granny skill (though many cute grannies have kept the torch lit for us).
- You have more control over the quality of the food you feed your family. In the USDA booklet on canning they say that the quality of properly home canned food is higher and the nutritional value often greater than most store bought canned goods. When you select the fruits and vegetables to be canned yourself you can make sure you don't use old, bruised, or unripe foods.
- Canning or preserving foods that you have either grown yourself or bought from local farms means that the food you are putting up has used a minimum of gas to be produced. The less miles your food has to travel to get to you, the better it is for all of us. Canning your own food is green in more than just one way though. As I will point out.
- Buying food to put up from local sources means that you can find out who uses pesticides and make choices about what you put on your family's table. A lot of small farmers are responding to consumers wishes to have less toxic pesticides used on food, many are not using chemicals at all even if they don't have an official organic certification. When you buy from a local farmer you can know who is growing your food and what practices they use because you can ask them in person. It is empowering to know the person who grows the food that feeds your family.
- Buying produce from local sources to put up for the winter also supports your local economy, and when a local economy is being well supported by its people, it grows stronger and healthier which helps it withstand the influences of the greater global economy which we have a lot less control over. Buying locally is both a green choice and a political choice.
- When you produce your own canned goods you reduce packaging waste. Generally speaking, most canners use glass canning jars which can be used again and again for many years to come. You can't reuse the cans from the supermarket and the jars from the supermarket are not made for repeated use and so aren't as reliably shatter proof. Although you have to use plastics for freezing, the home canner uses a lot less packaging than commercially made food. So canning is a great way to be more green.
- Plus, did I mention how FUN it is?!
*Yah, I know. It's not weird at all. I was being sarcastic. Wasn't that obvious? Am I losing my edge already by trying to write for the masses?
Note: I don't have a lot of local readers that I know of, but if you are local and you want to pick some silvanberries, you can do it now but you have to move fast because they're almost done for the year. You can call the Efimov farm at: 503-634-2813 for directions and information. Their address is: 34885 S. Barlow Road, Woodburn Oregon. The Efimovs also grow boysenberries and marionberries. All of these berries will be available for the next week but probably not long after that.
Labels: canning, farms, food preserving, produce, silvanberries