"And this is what I saw - shelves all the way around filled with jars and jars of canned fruit! I am going to offer to get the butter and cream every meal and count them.
"...Tonight I went after butter again, and I asked Mother Morgan if she would think me dreadfully snoopy if I counted the fruit jars. Now, darling, you simply have to believe me - there were six hundred quarts, and jars and jars of jam, preserves and chow chows, and a big immense jar of wonderful pickles. There were the most wonderful assortments of fruit, meat, fish and vegetables, and she had done it all herself. She is just so nice and modest about it; I'd think anyone who had done that ought to broadcast over the radio. And then she said in that nice quiet voice of hers that I am learning to love and respect, "But I canned a few more this year than usual." And what do you think she said? That two hundred of them were for us. Jim had bought the jars and sugar and she canned them."
The first time I met my husband’s aunt, she was in the kitchen of her farm in Southern Germany, cutting brown bits off a head of cauliflower, her fingernails blackened by soil and paring. My father-in-law did much the same with shriveled apples, taking them one by one from a cardboard box next to his chair. I recall being repulsed by the condition of the produce; indeed, it was the kind of stuff you would see in dumpsters in this country, never in the stores. But these people had been through a war on their own soil, and knew what being hungry was like. For my generation, who has lived in a world at war for nearly their entire life, there is no shortage, no hardship. But just as putting up less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables made sense back then, it makes good sense today. When we think of the energy (both human and petroleum) that goes into shipping produce and groceries on a mass scale, the short voyage from yard to jar to table preserves many things.
All over our neighborhood, fruit trees and bushes drop their fruit, only to be raked up by gardners and plopped in the garden waste. In our municipality, people can place yard waste and food scraps into the black toter and it will be recycled into compost, so all is not lost. But most of that compost is purchased to top dress ornamental plantings, not to enhance food-producing gardens. But the law actually favors gleaning: if a tree's fruit-laden branches hang over the fence into your yard or, even better, a public right-of-way, then you have the right to pick and enjoy said fruit. And we do.I keep containers in the car during the summer for roadside blackberry picking. If the fruit is in someone's yard, I have been known to ask if they will be eating it. Usually they're so sick of it that they're happy to see it go. When they receive a jar of homemade jam as a thank you, they call me the next year when the fruit is ripe.
Today, as I took my first jam of the season down to the shelves in the garage where they reside, I rotated the jars (older jam near the door, newer jars on the left). I also took the opportunity to channel my ancestor and count the jars, and did you know, there were 126 jars of jam, and 36 of applesauce! I will share some, and some will go to the school auction, but my family will enjoy the lion's share of the bounty and I admit to a great deal of satisfaction from seeing them, rows of soldiers ready for toast.
No, we don't buy supermarket jam, made with tired fruit rejects and corn syrup, and trucked long distances. We live off our suburban landscape.
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