A Year Of Pickles

It's hard to feel let down, bitter, or cold inside when your own two hands have coaxed a bucket of cucumbers into a year's worth of pickles. Pickles to eat in the dead of winter with cheddar cheese. Pickles to add to potato salad and to egg sandwiches.

It's hard to feel lonely when you are making the most basic thing in life (sustenance) with someone you feel wholly comfortable with and who you'd share your last jar with, if it ever came to that.

A friend who doesn't mind you spazzing out or your quirks and who gets you to try things that sound utterly disgusting* because you know there's a good chance you'll actually like it. Because she says so.

It's wonderful to wake up in the morning, go to a vast farm to pick cucumbers, and after hours of fun work...sit back and know that today you made enough dill pickles to last you an entire year. It's great to be a CEO** (I guess) but your work is so much less tangible or tasty. Your family appreciates the bills you pay but at the end of the day what did you MAKE? Making things is the best boost human beings can give their self esteem.

Homesteaders, housewives, or househusbands who make things, who cook, or garden, who fix things or build things, generally don't sit around feeling inadequate or worry about contributing enough to their family. Money isn't everything, but making things really is. You don't know how to cook? Go learn! You will feel more pride than you ever imagined you could over something so basic. It is the easiest way to make others feel cared for, nourished, loved, and safe. Including yourself.

When I looked at the rows of jars (56 of them!!) I felt capable, industrious, giddy, satisfied, and good about myself. Did you know that preserving your own food could make you feel like that? This was the official opening of my canning and preserving season. I've frozen some cherries and blueberries (in progress) but until the canner comes out and starts boiling and steaming like a locomotive through the thick summer air, it doesn't feel real.

While the dill heads are still ripe and full I have dilled beans to make. There's blueberries to freeze (and send to friends) and make into liqueur. Peaches to make into preserves and to freeze for smoothies when late spring brings every kind of hope but luscious fresh fruit. Tomatoes to sauce and dice and dry. There's eggplant to pickle, soups to can, and wild blackberries to eat straight from the center of a thorny hell.

These are the things that ground me when I don't know what the future holds. When I don't know what will come of us. One thing I can know for sure is that we have one whole year of pickles in the pantry.

**I personally can't think of a worse occupation besides being a prostitute. In a way I think prostitution is more honest work. No, that doesn't mean I "approve" of hooking, but as long as us humans need men, it will exist. Because men go in for that kind of thing. I know, I don't get it. For crying out loud though, why on earth don't men get arrested more often for employing prostitutes? And why do they think it's manly but the same men who think it's manly to be a "john" don't respect the women turning tricks for them? It's the johns who are the real losers in my opinion. But this isn't the subject of this post. I've gone wildly off topic with this footnote.