Yes, of course, I can. I have a vegetable garden, an herb garden and an orchard. How would it be that I wouldn’t can some of my beautiful bounty?! Besides, I was raised Mormon, and in southern California. We canned everything! It was the responsibility of every household to have a two year supply of food.
What we didn’t grow in our own garden (Mom did all the planting), we gleened from the fields after the harvesters went through. I remember going through the fields to pick potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, peas, onions, carrots . . . Then we would go to the LDS storehouse and unload fruit off the trucks. I especially remember the apricots we helped to process one year. They would get poured out of boxes from the trucks and spilled onto the end of a conveyor system. We were all spread out from the beginning of the conveyor to the end. Some of us picking out rotten apricots, some of us splitting them in halves, others pulling out the pits, and then finally others turning them all cut side up and sweeping them into a box where they would go into the warehouse and magically come out in Deseret Industries cans of “Canned Apricot Halves.”
My fingers were so sore and raw from digging out pits that day, but we took home cases of apricots and other fruits as our share of the harvest, for working at the warehouse. Our family also went to the local apple and peach orchards and picked fruit. I remember climbing the big apple trees and shaking the branches, my sisters running around under the trees picking the apples up off the ground.
Good times and memories. Results of my first harvest:
I also put up a case of pumpkin soup, loads of pickled cucumbers, green beans, and I froze tons of kale and chard. As I am posting this in 2019, I don’t remember everything I harvested or canned that year, but thankfully, I had some photos. But it was a bountiful year, and a very successful first harvest. Mom was proud.