Preserving the Local

Labor Day, 1985. I am eleven years old, a fifth grader. It’s the last real day of summer, the day that for every American kid means one last reprieve from the looming school year, one last gasp of summer, one final day of sweet freedom. And I am stuck in the family kitchen. Canning.

In The Gastronomical Me, MFK Fisher writes fondly about childhood memories of canning, about longing to taste the fuzz skimmed off strawberry jam and hoping to help with canning, thinking “such a beautifully smelly task should be fun.” I am certain that if she had actually been given the opportunity she desired to assist with the canning, she would have promptly refused the privilege.

I grew up in a family of seven children, all supported on a social worker’s income. Food was about frugality, and every fall this culminated in a seemingly endless progression of tedious food preservation tasks. In our house, fall not only brought the dreaded return to school, but also the dreaded canning season. My parents collected the bounty from their garden and, unthinkably, added more fruits and vegetables that they had purchased cheaply from roadside stands. We established assembly lines for peaches, apricots and pears, ripe fruit slipping from hand to hand as we blanched, peeled, sliced and syruped, the ripe fruit turning into a sticky, itchy mess of fruit fly heaven. We punched pits out of piles of cherries, smashed tomatoes through a food mill and shaved cobs of corn, trying to gather the unruly kernels into freezer bags. We shredded overgrown zucchinis to freeze for winter batches of sweet bread and juiced grapes. Some years there was pickling, the sickening sourness of hot vinegar suddenly overwhelming the house.

The forced labor was bad enough, but the real clincher was that I didn’t even like the wares that were produced by our canning efforts. I believed that food was best if it was store-bought and highly processed; for me, the jars of food stowed away in our basement were not food, but an embarrassment. I did like one aspect of the canned fruit: the mornings when my mother would throw a bottle of peaches or apricots into the blender, creating a pureed frothy bit of fruit magic. That I liked; but the rest I shoveled into my mouth with a bit of dread.

Luckily for me, my mom eventually started teaching, our family funds increased, and the canning stopped. I divorced myself from canning, lost my fascination with store-bought food and developed an increasing fascination with real food. A few summers ago, I started regularly buying produce at my local farmer’s market; initially my interest in locally grown produce was about taste and variety. I could simply find better food: deep red heirloom tomatoes with a yellow base rising up like a sunrise, purple-skinned carrots, blue potatoes, yellow-fleshed watermelon, striped Chioggia beets. Eventually my weekly farmer’s market ritual became something more than a culinary adventure; I started to learn about the farms where my food was grown, I met the farmers. I joined a Community Supported Agriculture program, and every week of the past two growing seasons, I have been handed a bag of fruits and vegetables by someone who knows my name. I know when the summer squash will arrive and when it will finally, mercifully, stop. I know when to start longing for tomatoes. This season, when a surprising surge of early winter weather arrived, I knew there would be no more tomatoes; and I worried about my farmers, James and Irene, wondering how the storm might affect their livelihood.

As I learned about the farms and their farmers, my search for flavor became a dedication to local food. I started to understand what eating locally can mean for community, for local economies and for the environment. I let myself consider the possibilities of food preservation. This summer, with a bit of trepidation, I bought a water bath canner and its associated implements. I have been stacking up jar after jar of preserves, but I do so with a bit of self-loathing: Have I become too domestic? Too frugal? Have I finally conceded that my parents were right? And yet, in the discomfort of canning, I am proud of my efforts. Eating locally grown fruits and vegetables has always been a culinary act, but it is becoming a political act; I realize that my food choices are not only about gastronomic satisfaction but about an obligation to live ethically and consciously.

Labor Day, 2006. I am thirty-two years old, a teacher. It’s the last real day of summer, the day that for any teacher means one last reprieve. And I am in the kitchen. Canning.

Melissa Helquist is a writing teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah. When she isn’t trying to learn the longstanding family tradition of food preservation, she is happiest baking pies and exploring Utah’s stunning landscape.