My pioneer ancestors stored food like a repository of matrilineal love. As their rearguard, my life pulses with the seasonal flow of home canning. I’m the librarian of recipes, the armourer of pots and jars. I know when to put up peaches (mid-August-September), how to bottle carrot pudding (fill 3/4 of the way, pressure can method), and the easiest way to pit cherries (don’t). I’ve adjusted some things as science and technology change. For example, my mom steamed her carrot pudding and I still marvel that we didn’t get botulism. Not all traditions are healthy.
As a new mom way back in the 1900’s, I read Blueberries for Sal with my oldest child. When we went blueberry picking, the berries dropped kaplink kaplank kaplunk in our pails while my child and I looked for mother bears and baby bears. In our vanishingly small kitchen the next day, we bottled tiny, sweet Maine berries in simple syrup. When our New England winters turned particularly blustery and the power went out (again), we ate the berries straight from the jar, pouring the juice into our mouths and feeling, for a moment, the heat of that summer day, conversing with bees, our fingers purple.
In the early aughts, I enlisted my children in food preservation the way my mom had. From early July through late October, the pressure canner and the water bath canner fought the juicer and peeler for space as we processed tomatoes, peaches, pears, and jams. Oh, so many jams. Caramel Spice Pear Butter, although time consuming to make, consistently topped the list of requests when a child was sent to the storeroom to collect preserves for Sunday rolls.
The love our matriarchs had for children they would never know kept them returning to blisteringly hot kitchens to put up just one more batch of chicken soup, one more round of shelled peas. Each bottle of newly-pressed grape juice I place on shelves links my wandering, unsettled self to past generations of Huntsman and Toronto women, stabilizing me. With each satisfying pop of a sealed jar, my children are that much more protected against the fear of hunger.
Talking to a Food Justice professor, I mentioned the genealogy of food preservation I could trace, from Sardinia (salt the fish) to Idaho (par boil potatoes and hot pack, pressure can beef stew, carrots don’t get soggy if left in large chunks) to my little suburban home in Denver (the growing season shrinks as climate change shifts our last snow and first frost). She asked, “And will you pass the equipment on to your children?”
When I answered that my children aren’t interested (at least not yet), I looked inside my heart and learned I don’t mourn severing this particular matriarchal ritual. I rejoice that my children don’t need to preserve a harvest against the starving months, nor do they carry the fear of famine that undergirds many of the traditions I inherited. I see all the things they do, instead, and I know that the specifics of the rituals may have changed but the foundational principles remain the same: preserve knowledge uniquely ours, provide joy in bleak times, make the world safer for all of God’s creations. By putting aside the time consuming labor of food preservation, my children have space to put on a more relevant mantle of watchcare.
Similarly, the optics of our Exponent rituals look different today than they did for the founders, but the purpose remains the same: shore up the wisdom experience gives us and use it to nourish our siblings. Just as changes in knowledge altered my home canning rituals and made them healthier, changes in the world give us a chance to more effectively learn from and love each other. Change can be jarring (pun absolutely intended) but I’m excited for the traditions we’re forging together. Our new website fosters increased cohesion between blog and magazine (digital and physical) which will hopefully spark rich conversations. When we read, write, paint, sculpt, carve, and discuss, our field of vision will expand as we engage the readings, writings, paintings, sculptures, carvings, and discussions in the extended Exponent community. Technology, and hearts open to change, allow us to connect to our siblings around the world, back through history and forward through time. We have access to multiple genealogies of love to feed our souls in the sacred space Exponent has always offered.
As I type on my computer with my grandmother’s journals beside me, I wonder what things my children will remember when I’m nothing more than stories they tell. I hope they continue to set aside those things that don’t work for them, even if those things preserved my life. I hope they see me, and our matriarchs, and all of you, in a never-ending circle, applauding their wisdom in choosing what to carry forward and what to put down. I can’t wait to hear what rituals you honor. It’s going to be a great year.
7 Responses
Beautiful! I love how you show that it is not the specifics of any one ritual that matters but the purpose behind the ritual. Also, Maine blueberries are the best.
I love how you recognized and named the foundational principles you passed on to your children, even when the outward manifestation of the principles look very different. Also, that caramel spice pear butter looks divine! I’m not sure it would last long enough to get into jars at my house.
Wow, this helped me put down a guilt I’d forgotten I’d been carrying these many years. I don’t know many of food preservation and texile making skills my female forebearers knew. But I have other skills essential to my life that they did not need. And that is okay.
I love hearing about the traditions of our shared Huntsman heritage. Those traditions didn’t make it to me, though I don’t think my mother made a conscious choice to leave them behind beyond the choice to move to Florida from Idaho. She did learn to cook okra and greens and can squash relish and sweet pickles, but I never saw the need for learning how to can. I
I love your vision for the newly united Exponent II organization and willingness to develop new traditions that serve us better. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
I recently got a recipe for the old fashioned chili sauce my mother used to make. I was also given a jar. A trip straight back to my childhood! I’ve never been much of a canner, but I’m thinking of trying to make some myself next summer.
Ah. This is beautiful, thank you. Often I am overcome with guilt for putting down what my grandmothers gave me, but your words are wise and remind me that things change and that change doesn’t invalidate the past.
I remember my grandmother’s pantry full of preserves. Now my mom’s is less full. And I don’t even have a pantry. But I still hold so much that they gave me.
When my grandfather died suddenly in 1946, my grandmother received a condolence card from a woman who wrote about the tragic loss of her young daughter over 20 years before. One line from her letter pierced my heart. She said that in the time after her child died, “a jar of fruit seemed to last forever.” Of all the messages I’ve read from my grandmother’s papers, this one rings most true. The link between canning and love is strong.