On Friday I wrote about being sick of canning. On Saturday I woke up and realized that I was done with the plums, tomatoes, grapes, and red raspberries. Into the basement went the canners and onto the sofa went I for a late morning nap. That evening, my husband lit the first fire of the season in the wood stove, and we cozied up in the living room with a stack of new library books.

My family knows what we love, produce-wise, and as the children get older, I find I am focusing more on quantity than experimentation. Thus the 39 quarts of one kind of salsa, sweet pickles only, and three-fourths of one entire freezer in green beans. It’s boring, yes, but practical. We’ll eat it.

Recently, a hardcore gardening girlfriend—seriously, the woman is a preserving diva—told me that when her kids leave home, she’s going cold turkey on the canning front. She wants to spend her time doing other things. And Costco has good salsa.

I don’t know what I’ll feel like doing when my kids leave home. I’m certainly no canning purist (Costco does have good salsa), and my husband is most definitely not a gardener. But I have a hard time imagining throwing in the canner completely. Putting food in jars is for me what digging holes is for 8-year-old boys: it’s time consuming and kinda pointless (by economic standards), but it’s also deeply satisfying. There’s something primal about harvesting food and squirreling it away for later.

But really, I’m not sure why I spend all these hours and days doing a task that complicates my life. Perhaps the drive is nothing deeper than an urge to “play house.” Perhaps I do it for the narrowed focus that comes with a sharp knife, slippery plums, and boiling water. Maybe it’s because hard work feels good and the being done feels even better. Whatever the reason, it’s strong enough to keep me going year after year.

And now, for this year, I’m done.

Boy, does it feel good.

2014 Garden Stats and Notes

strawberries, frozen, sliced: 7 quarts
strawberries, sugared sauce: 2 pints
strawberries, freezer jam: 6 pints
strawberries, daiquiri mix: 4 pints
mint tea concentrate: a lot
pesto: 9 batches, frozen
zucchini relish: 5 pints and 5 half-pints
applesauce, lodi: 82 quarts
green beans (mostly Roma): 107 quart-and-a-half bags
peaches, Red Haven, canned: 17 quarts
corn, frozen: 15 quarts and 29 pints
nectarines, chopped, canned: 42 quarts
nectarines, dried: 21 pints
red raspberries, frozen: 26 quarts
sweet pickles, canned: 16 quarts
tomatoes, roasted sauce: 36 pints
tomatoes, roasted garlic pizza sauce: 26 pints
tomatoes, red wine sauce: 16 quarts
tomatoes, salsa: 39 quarts and 8 pints
tomatoes, canned: 13 quarts
grape jelly: 9 quarts, 21 pints, and 2 half-pints
grape juice: 10 quarts
plums, canned: 9 quarts
plums, dried: 4 pints
plum jam, canned: 7½ pints
sweet potatoes: 1 heaping bushel
regular potatoes, assorted kinds: 1½ bushels

Notes:
*Don’t plant the cucumbers next to the zucchini because they—the cucumbers—will die.
*Nectarines are awesome. Order four bushels next year.
*Twenty-four sweet potato starts is the right amount.
*Also, five to six basil plants is perfect.
*Dried plums are easy and tasty, but we have yet to see how popular they are with the fam. Same with the plum jam.
*Maybe we’ll finally have enough salsa?
*Next year, order ahead and get five bushels of Lodi apples in one go.

This same time, years previous: chili cobanero, retreating, the good things that happen, ketchup, two ways, making my children jump, cinnamon sugar breadsticks, September studies. whole wheat jammies, whoooosh!, lemon butter pasta with zucchini, on being green and other ho-hum matters, hot chocolate, coffee fix ice cream, me and mine, and ricotta.          

My mom emailed me. “Are you on strike?” And then Girlfriend From Burkina Faso was all like WRITE SOMETHING ALREADY.

Nothing is wrong, I explained. I’m just weary from constant canning.

“You know what I need?” I whined to my husband. “I need two full days to myself. No kids. No canning. No nothing. Actually, wait. I have a better idea. Could we till up the garden this weekend? The whole thing—boom—gone? I think that might fix me.”

Just the thought of NO GARDEN makes me want to go fly a kite. Or at least write a blog post.

You know what irony is? I’ll tell you what irony is. Irony is deciding to pre-order a book for the first time ever because you just don’t want to mess with the hassle of borrowing it from the library and then, within a couple hours of receiving the book, turning it into the library and spending the next couple days trying to get it back out. That’s irony folks, served up nice and tart.

Last night I served the Ladymaids (because they don’t want to be called Milkmaids anymore and until we come up with a new name, this is it) a plum torte. It was a new recipe and we agreed that the pastry part was a bit on the choking side of dry. Today I made another plum torte and it is infinitely better. (This recipe, but with halved plums pressed into the top.)

I should probably write the Ladymaids an apology for serving them inferior goods.

My daughter has three puppies left. I’m threatening to do unkind things (to them, to her, to the whole world) if she doesn’t get rid of them soon, but truth is, I don’t mind all that much. They are infinitely sweet, and, contrary to what I expected, they appear to be getting cuter.

The puppies are forbidden in the house, but every so often the whole pack comes barreling through the (mysteriously left) open door. I secretly love watching them skid through the kitchen and around chair legs, their pink tongues lapping the air, jolly eyes shining.

I am on a good book streak. There was The Glass Castle (can anyone diagnose the mother for me?), followed by Carry On, Warrior. Now I’m reading Still Alice (messes with my mind, it does). Next up is my pre-ordered-and-yet-to-be-retrieved-from-the-library Home Grown.

I burned down my in-box. Not because it bothered me, but because Jamie told me to. It didn’t make me feel noticeably happier. I believe it requires something a bit more substantial—LIKE BURYING THE ENTIRE GARDEN—to get my buzz on.

This. Is. Perfect. The part about what to eat? It’s us. Completely. (Except we don’t order out because of the country living and all.)

This same time, years previous: regretful wishing, roasted tomato and garlic pizza sauce, 2012 garden stats and notes, rainy day writing, how to clean a room, blasted cake, almond cream pear tart, fruit-on-the-bottom baked oatmeal, grilled salmon with lemon butter, a quick rundown, the big night, and say cheese!. 

The past weekend, the cousins came. For two full days, the children played without ceasing.

It always strikes me as rather amazing, the children’s ability to take up residence with a pack of rarely-seen family members and completely get along. Electronics is a non-issue. No one (except one of my own, gottaloveit) complains about being bored. There is no “I’m-too-cool-for-this-game” snootiness. Inclusiveness and positive attitudes rule.

It’s not as though our families are exactly alike because we’re not. Like any other family, we have different temperaments, interests, and life styles. And yet, somehow, all our children love being together. What a gift.

Along with my husband’s side of the family (a third of them, anyway) visiting us, my side of the family was also gathered in our neck of the woods. On Saturday I made donuts for everybody—that’s 28 people, total—and some of my family joined the chaos again on Sunday for hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages. The more the merrier, I say.

Now we are back to our small, quiet (only in comparison) household of six, normal routines, and boatloads of tomatoes to put up. But we’re still feasting on the leftovers. And when those run out, we’ll savor the memories. They’re the best part, I think.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (9.2.13), the quotidian (9.3.12), caramelized oat topping, roasted peaches, around the house, picture perfect, honey-whole wheat cake, on our way, smartly, and blueberry coffee cake.