Linda Hoye's Blog, page 184

Another Perfect Day

It’s noon and it’s been a busy morning. I’ve been occupied in the kitchen making Sungold tomato jam with the tomatoes we picked last night, and canning a few more quarts of beet pickles. Gerry has been puttering around the house and spent a good part of the morning downstairs ironing his shirts.

As I stirred jam, filled jars, and worked in the kitchen I was reminded of another day two years when I had a similar feeling of contentment that I felt this morning–September 2, 2012. I wrote about it here.

On that day too I was busy canning the season’s bounty. Gerry had recently had surgery on his shoulder so was limited in what he could do. He sat at the kitchen table cutting up bananas and putting them in the dehydrator to make banana chips for the grandchildren.

Often, throughout that ordinary day, we commented to one another that “this is what it will be like when we retire”.

We’re there now, retired that is, and as I thought back on this ordinary day and contented myself with simple things around the house this morning I felt abundantly blessed. We are retired. This is what we envisioned.

We just finished a simple lunch consisting of a slice of the bread I made yesterday, a bit of this morning’s Sungold tomato jam, homemade yogurt cheese, peaches and fresh crab that Gerry brought home from the fishing trip he just returned from.

I just took the beets out of the canner and am getting ready to move on to the next activity. Outside it is quiet, the air fresh from the morning rain. I take a moment to stand on the deck and drink in the view wondering if the deer who stopped by yesterday will pay us a visit today as well. Later, I’ll join my bestie in town for a pedicure and will stop by my garden on the way home to harvest things for dinner.

I’ve had a deep sense for a long time that it’s the simple things that satisfy, things that don’t have a price tag attached, things that really aren’t things at all, and that often we are too busy to appreciate the simple blessings in front of us every day. I found myself restless, frustrated by my own busyness, and yearning for a different pace.

This morning as we busied ourselves with things around home, and I was reminded of our retirement vision, I felt a deep sense of gratitude and contentment.

This is what it is like now that we are retired. And we are blessed.

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You may be wondering what in the world yogurt cheese is so I thought I’d show you.

A couple of days ago I took two jars of my homemade yogurt poured them out onto cheesecloth. I suspended that package over a bowl in the refrigerator where it’s been for the past couple of days while the whey drained out of the yogurt.

This morning I dumped the yogurt, now cheese, into a bowl and we spread it on bread for lunch. Future batches will be mixed with things like either Sungold tomato jam, assorted herbs and spices, or edible flowers like nasturtium or borage.

I was first inspired to make yogurt cheese by author Sharon Lovejoy who wrote about it here. It’s taken me this long to finally do it. Gerry and I are pleased with the result and I’ll definitely be making more in the future.

Canning – Coleslaw

Canning coleslaw? Yes, I was skeptical too but I read account after account about how delicious this was and so I decided to try a small batch. It was so good that a small batch led to another small batch which led to a larger batch and now there are fifteen quarts and two pints on my canning shelf, to say nothing of what we’ve already consumed.

It’s true. This is good stuff and it remains crispy even after processing. One could dress it up a bit by adding sunflower seeds or raisins after opening a jar. I even read accounts of folks adding mayo. We like it just as it is out of the jar; I’ve served it as a side dish and put it on hot dogs.

I got this recipe from a blog called Chickens in the Road but I subsequently found it on many other sites as well. The recipe says that this coleslaw can also be frozen instead of canned.

Yield: It’s difficult to predict how much you’ll get from a batch given the varying sizes of cabbage heads and other veggies. Given that, I found that the volume of syrup the recipe makes was far less that what I needed and so I increased it accordingly.

Ingredients

1 medium head of cabbage (I used green cabbage but this would be equally good–and pretty!– with purple cabbage.)
1 large carrot
1 small onion (I used a white onion but a red one would be tasty too.)
1 green pepper (I used whatever I had on hand–orange, yellow, red, or green.)
1 tsp. salt (optional, in my opinion)

Syrup

1 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water
2 cups sugar (I used only half of this. Depends on your taste.)
1 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. mustard seed

Instructions

Shred vegetables and combine in a large bowl. I used my food processor for everything.

Add salt and let stand one hour. Drain water from vegetables. (The purpose of this step from what I can tell is to draw moisture out of the veggies so they remain crispy. I also saw varying measurements for the salt–some said a teaspoon and others said a tablespoon. I used a teaspoon, got very little moisture out from the veggies, and my coleslaw was absolutely crunchy. I will probably skip this step in the future.)

Boil syrup ingredients together for one minute. Cool. (I think it would be important to cool the syrup if you were going to freeze the coleslaw. As I was canning it, I didn’t cool it completely because I wanted to do a hot pack.)

Add syrup to vegetables and pack into jars. Wipe rims to ensure they are clean and apply lids and rings. Process in water bath canner for 15 minutes

For my altitude here in Kamloops I need to increase the processing time by 5 minutes. You need to check the altitude for your location and adjust accordingly.

Canning – Sungold Tomato Jam

Let me introduce you to the Sungold Tomato. This is the first year I’ve grown this prolific plant and it will definitely have a place in the garden in the future.

Sungolds are an indeterminate tomato which means that it will keep growing bearing fruit throughout the season. They need to be staked or supported by some sort of trellis–they grow fast and up to ten feet tall!. They ripen early–they were the first to ripen in my garden this year–to a beautiful golden orange colour. Like all tomato plants they need to be in a sunny location with at least six hours of sunshine a day.

The Sungolds are perfect to eat fresh picked from the garden, in salads, and on veggie trays. I like to make a quick pasta sauce with them by cooking them down in a bit of olive oil and seasoning with salt and pepper and lots of fresh basil–the flavour is sweeter than most other tomatoes.

We are overrun with a plethora of this garden jewel right now. I’ve been tossing them in with the larger Brandywines and Black Krims for soups and stewed tomatoes and I’ll be packaging up a bunch of them to toss in the freezer. No need to blanch these tiny ones–I’ll use them for sauces later and don’t mind the skins.

I came across a recipe for Sungold Tomato Jam recipe the other day and, faced with a plethora of Sungolds, decided to give it a try. I always thought that the words “tomato” and “jam” didn’t belong in the same sentence but I was wrong. This stuff is dee-licious! It will be good served on a cheese tray, as a condiment on sandwiches or burgers, and I might even try it as a glaze on chicken breasts.

I found this basic recipe in a couple of places: My Homespun Home and Food in Jars.

Yield: The recipe says it makes about six 4 ounce jars but I didn’t have any of the smaller jars so put it all together in one pint jar. The yield is just an estimate as it depends on the tomatoes and how much juice then make.

Ingredients

2 pounds Sungold tomatoes
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
zest of one lemon
2 Tbsp chopped basil

Instructions

Wash the tomatoes and cut each one in half.

Combine the chopped tomatoes with the sugar in a large pot. Let sit for one hour to allow the tomatoes to release their juices.

After an hour, add lemon juice to the tomato mixture and bring it to a boil.
Cook at a boil for 30-35 minutes, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes have softened and the syrup has thickened. You might want to use the plate test to determine if your jam is ready.
Remove from heat, add the chopped basil and half of the lemon zest. Taste, and add the rest of the lemon zest if desired.

Pour the jam into prepared jars, wipe jar rims to ensure they are clean, and apply lids and rings. Store the jars in the refrigerator to be used within a few weeks or process them for 10 minutes in a water bath canner so they can be stored for up to a year.

For my altitude here in Kamloops I need to increase the processing time by 5 minutes. You need to check the altitude for your location and adjust accordingly.

A Slow Morning

It’s a quiet Sunday morning as I write this and I’ve decided to give myself the gift of a slow day. Gerry left in the wee hours of Friday morning to go fishing and I’ve been blessed with four days at home alone. I treasure these rare days and don’t want to squander them.

For the past couple of days I’ve spent much of my time tending my garden and in the kitchen preserving the season’s bounty. Our freezer is filling up, the dehydrator is humming away, and my canning shelf looks like a work of art with its rows of multi-coloured jars.

This morning I woke early and took Maya, our Yorkie, outside while it was still dark. Gerry usually takes her out once or twice during the night but I’ve been blessed with sleeping through the night since I retired so I informed her that she needn’t expect that kind of treatment in his absence. So far, she’s been good with waiting until I wake around 4:00am to go outside for her morning ablutions.

Once she had “done her business” I made a cup of coffee and we settled back into bed where she promptly fell fast asleep and I opened my iPad to catch up on some of my favourite blogs. I am enjoying reading Rhonda Hetzel’s Down to Earth blog and have been making my way through all of her posts since she started writing it in 2007. I love her philosophy of living simply:

If you haven’t already discovered the power of your own home you are in for a delightful and beautiful shock. Come closer and let me whisper in your ear, because if everyone knows this, it will cause a revolution. The work you do in your own home, by creating a warm and secure place for yourself and your family to live in, will enrich you and make you a different person. It saved me from a life of ridiculous spending and mindless acquisition and slowed me down enough to allow me to see the beauty here. When I took the time to change my attitude towards my home, it not only gave me the energy to do housework and the strength to make the physical changes so our home better suited how we live, it changed me in the process. It is a beautiful change that I am grateful for every day.

After a while, and a second cup of coffee, we rose and began the day. First stop was the kitchen where yesterday’s canning waiting on the counter: seven quarts of beet pickles, seven quarts of vegetable soup, and an amazing pint of Sungold tomato jam. I checked that all of the jars were sealed (success!), then removed the rings, wiped the jars, and labeled the lid of each one with a Sharpie. I can’t tell you how fulfilling it is to greet the day with a vision of the previous day’s effort knowing it will feed us into the winter.

I’ve been thinking that I need to get organized about documenting the canning I’m doing so I don’t forget details about which recipes I’ve used and other things I want to remember so I plan on working on that today. Some of that documentation may take the form of blog posts so stay tuned.

I’ve got so many ideas for projects and things I want to do bouncing around inside of my head that it may be a challenge for me to take the kind of slow day as my body is telling me I need to. It’s kind of funny that even in retirement I’m challenged to find that delicate balance. Still, I find that’s a good problem to have.

Vegetable Soup and Slow Food

If you ask my granddaughter about fast food she will tell you that she doesn’t eat it and that she eats slow food instead. Her mommy is doing an excellent job of educating her on the merits of healthy eating.

I’ve pondered the concept of slow food often recently as I’ve stood at my kitchen sink washing produce I’ve brought in from my garden. It takes time to tend a garden, harvest its bounty, wash it, and prepare a meal from it. These times of cleaning vegetables and preparing a meal have afforded me time to slow down, reflect, pray for loved ones, and savour every moment. I’ve felt blessed.

I’ve been busy canning in recent weeks (and not writing as evidenced by my absence from this blog!). The shelf in our storage room is filling up with jar after jar of fruit, vegetables, soups and sauces that will feed us for many months to come. I’ve found great fulfillment in preserving this year’s harvest by canning, freezing, and dehydrating.

Today, I finally had enough tomatoes from the garden to make a big pot of soup that I subsequently canned in pint jars and to be tucked away for another day. This soup illustrates well the concept of slow food since I started these tomatoes from seed back in late March–too early really for this gardening climate but the itch to get growing was too much for me to resist any longer.

I tended thirty seedlings, watched them grow, and repotted them when necessary.

I gifted a few friends and family members with plants and the rest found a home in my garden.

In early July I savoured the first taste of a sun-warmed and freshly picked Sungold tomato.

A few weeks later I rejoiced when the first bright red Black Krim ripened enough to be plucked from the vine.

I became almost giddy when the first big bright red Brandywine was ready.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been eating tomatoes on sandwiches, in salads, and all by themselves. I’ve combined them with peppers and basil from the garden and made sauces for pasta. It’s tomato season to be sure.

This morning, as I assembled the ingredients for the vegetable soup I couldn’t help but think that the soup was really five months in the making if one counts back to the first tiny tomato seeds that I planted–slow food to be sure!

I was chopping vegetables this morning when I got a phone call from the local green grocer letting me know that the pickling cucumbers had arrived. Oh my! It’s going to be a busy couple of days. I joked to Gerry that I’m working harder these days than I did before I retired.

Ah, but this work fulfills like the former never did.

Grasshopper Lessons

It seems like almost every day there is some story, some photograph, or some other supposed truth circulating on social media that seems hard to believe. Yet many of these things go viral and intelligent people end up believing the stories to be true.  A by-product of the twenty-first century and the lightening-fast speed with which we can share information, right?

Wrong!

I have a couple of silly photographs that I remember my dad showing me when I was a kid–the one shown below being one of them. I honestly don’t remember if Dad tried to string me along to get me to believe that there really were grasshoppers measuring three feet in length at one time, but I doubt it. The photograph was just something funny and worth a laugh now and then.

When I came across this photograph in a box of old pictures recently I decided to do a quick Google search to see what I could find about it. Turns out that the photograph had a pretty wide circulation back in the 1930s and its location was attributed to Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, New Zealand, and an assortment of other locations in addition to Saskatchewan.

Those were harsh, dusty, and horrible years for many families living on the US and Canadian prairie and grasshoppers did, in fact, destroy crops and lives during the Great Depression. It’s no wonder that some enterprising individuals found a way to laugh in the face of adversity and postcards like this one became popular.

I can’t imagine that any of the 1930s farmers actually believed this photograph to be real. They had only to walk outside where the hoppers were everywhere, chewing and destroying their hopes and dreams, to know that it didn’t take a grasshopper as big as this one to destroy a life. The reality was right there in front of them.

Many of those families packed up their meagre belongings and left the dusty prairie in hope of finding a better life elsewhere. They may have seen postcards like this in a mercantile store or a gas station and smiled at the whimsy of the photographer, thankful for a brief respite from the burden they shouldered as they left their dreams behind following an uncertain and dusty road.

Other families chose to ride out the dust storms and crop failures–perhaps they were more optimistic or maybe they lacked the resources, physical and emotional, to leave. I imagine barefooted children in an almost-empty convenience store giggling at the image of a grasshopper larger than they were. They knew the reality–the incessant click-clicking of the grasshoppers as they flew and the defeated look in the eyes of their parents as crops were destroyed.

As I’ve been reading historical accounts of life on the prairie during those harsh years I’m struck again and again with how those who lived through those days remember the good times and laughter. They remember the camaraderie they enjoyed with one another and the way they shared what little they had with their neighbours. They remember simple joys like foul suppers, pitching horseshoes, and school concerts.

I’m reminded anew that we don’t need the latest and greatest things to have a happy and fulfilled life. We don’t need the biggest houses, the fanciest cars, the fattest bank accounts. We can learn from these folks from yesteryear who look back on the harsh times when many families had nothing, or lost everything, and yet still found ways to be thankful for what little they had. They still found ways of having fun and making memories.

What my quick internet search about this photograph revealed that was most surprising–and frankly disturbing–were relatively current stories speculating on whether or not this was fact or fiction. Kind of makes you a bit concerned about the future of our society, doesn’t it?

Remember: If it seems too far-fetched to be true it probably isn’t and Snopes.com is a great resource to check out many of these urban legends before you share them.

An Occasional Brisk Laxative

One of the projects I planned for retirement was going through my grandmother’s old recipes. Many of these old recipes are in her own handwriting written in fading ink on paper that is falling apart. I want to do something to preserve them.

Grandma also collected recipes from the newspaper; there are random clippings as well some full newspaper sections. These newspapers provide a fascinating glimpse into the times. This morning I was reading in the October 14, 1936 edition of the Free Press Prairie Farmer, Winnipeg and came across an interesting column.

Readers were invited to send in their health-related questions to be answered. There was no indication of who was answering the inquires–no assurance that the advice being given was being provided by any kind of medical professional at all. Here’s a sample of the types of questions in the column:

Q-Girl, 18 years of age, five feet six inches tall and weighing 136 pounds has lately had headaches and felt dizzy and often feels very sleepy. This causes her to feel sick and weak. What will improve her condition? –Just Wondering

A-Probably if this girl had a little more active life and took an occasional brisk laxative it would remedy this condition.

I was surprised at the number of maladies for which an occasional brisk laxative was suggested as the remedy.

For a young mother who isn’t sleeping, has bad nerves, and who has had a backache for a year–try an occasional brisk laxative.

A seven-year-old boy who tires quickly and has a sore knee–why, an occasional brisk laxative will take care of that pronto.

Another interesting query came from a middle-aged man who was jumpy when sleeping, talking a lot, and going over in his sleep all the work he had been doing all day. Solution? A physical examination of the circulatory system, heart, blood vessels, and kidneys. Interesting, given that this was written in 1936 in the midst of the Great Depression. No wonder the poor fellow was restless and having trouble sleeping. It wasn’t advised, but I wonder if an occasional brisk laxative wouldn’t have helped him too. Kind of like chicken soup–couldn’t hurt, right?

There were a couple of more serious questions and, thankfully, the columnist advised the reader to get a complete physical examination pronto. One might read between the lines and infer that taking an occasional brisk laxative while waiting for that examination might be prudent too.

I’m enjoying this journey into the past and I’m sure I’ll have more tidbits to share as I continue to browse through the old newspapers. Meanwhile, now you know what to do to cure what ails you. You’re welcome.

Grandma’s Cool Stuff

We were blessed yesterday to enjoy a brief visit from two of our grandchildren and their mom. What a joy it was to spend time doing simple things like tossing a tennis ball, blow bubbles, and just hang out. These are the things forever-memories are made of. Our grandson was enthralled with a solar-powered butterfly that was flitting around above my fairy garden.

“Grandma you have cool stuff,” he said as he watched the butterfly dance in the sunshine.

I suppose I do have a few things that a six-year-old might consider to be cool and I’m planning to accumulate even more simple and super-cool things now that we’ll be blessed to have the grands around more often.

My grandson’s comment reminded me of some of the things I once considered cool when we visited my own grandma’s house. Grandma lived a simple life, she never had much money, she didn’t have a special toy box reserved with things for my sister and I to play with when we visited.  Neither was she the kind of fun-loving and cuddly grandma I strive to be. In fact, I can’t remember ever receiving a hug from her, I don’t recall that she ever told me she loved me, and I’m certain I never cuddled up to her while she read a story to me.

Still, I have memories of special things from when we visited her at the tiny house where she raised my mom and her siblings by herself. Here’s a sampling:

The shards of blue glass in her stucco house that my sister and I sometimes plucked out (and were subsequently scolded for when our parents found out.).
A screen door that had a worn smooth wooden spool for a handle.
The “thwacking” sound that door made when we didn’t take time to shut it gently (and my dad’s bellowing reminder to us not to slam the door afterward).
A clear glass rain gauge atop of a wooden pole that held one end of a very long clothesline.
The stinky, hot, fly infested outhouse that I hated having to use (Admittedly, this isn’t one of the “cool” memories but oddly enough I still consider it a fond memory. Go figure.)
A rusty old toy stove behind one of the sheds in Grandma’s yard that my mom used to play with as a child.
A hedge of overgrown who-knows-how-old lilac bushes in the front of the house and a wooden wagon wheel hidden deep within it that I was convinced no one knew about but me
A tiny twin bed with a soft and sunken mattress in Grandma’s bedroom that my mom slept in when she was a child.
A cream-coloured plastic bowl grandma filled with water heated in a kettle and set in the sink that didn’t have a drain in order to wash dishes. The “slop” water we carried outside to dump after the chore was completed.
Grandma’s classic old cook stove.
The musty earthy smelling cellar that contained an indoor lavatory reserved for use  in the cold winter months when a trip to the outdoor outhouse would have been impossible.
Grandma’s homemade beet relish. I liked it best spread on a slice if buttered white bread.
Sheer curtains on her bedroom window blowing in the hot summer wind lightly brushing against the old-fashioned tick-tocking clock on her dresser.
A plethora of brand new never-worn flannel nightgowns that Mom and her sister had given to grandma over the years. We found them in her dresser drawer after she died and I wore those nightgowns myself for many years to come.
Stairs leading to an attic that we were never allowed to explore. My imagination went wild wondering about the treasures that might be hidden up there. I remember the secret thrill I felt when my sister were finally granted permission to climb those stairs long after my grandma’s death and shortly after my bachelor uncle’s death.

Even though I never felt love from my grandma I enjoyed the time we spent at her tiny house in Benson, Saskatchewan. It anchored me to the past and connected me to family, albeit a family that I shared no blood relation with, they were family nonetheless.

I journeyed back to grandmas house a few years ago. It was literally a shell of what it had once been. Someone had gutted it with plans with grand plans to redo it.

The outside of the structure was similar to how I remembered it but the inside was almost unrecognizable. I was struck with how tiny the space really was and yet as I stepped over and around the demolished ruins I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic about the cool stuff that had once been there, things that now exist only in my memories.

Today, I’m wondering if my own grandchildren will one day have precious memories about some of the cool stuff they discover at my house–things with little or no monetary value but priceless by the memories they evoke. My goal is to make it so.

Stories

Recently we spent a few days in our nation’s capital, Ottawa, Ontario, where we gathered to celebrate the life of my husbands oldest brother who left us suddenly and much too soon.

Air travel can sometimes leave me frazzled and cranky as I deal with navigating through unfamiliar airports, crowds of people (not all of whom share the same sense of what constitutes good manners), the ordeal of passing through security screening, flight delays, turbulence, not enough leg room, and other various indignities. We were fortunate on this trip to enjoy a relatively uneventful travel experience; other than a minor delay with the return flight everything went according to plan.

I always find myself inspired when I travel and have the opportunity to sit back, watch people, and imagine their stories. People are fascinating; diverse, entertaining, humorous, and yes, sometimes irritating. Still, as my life intersects ever-so-briefly with people who, in all likelihood, I will never see again I can’t help but consider what their life story is at that particular moment. Why is that man running down the concourse? What is that woman who is staring blankly into space and tossing M&M’s into her mouth thinking about? Who is meeting the young mother with the sleeping baby on her shoulder and the energetic toddler at her destination?

Another thing I like about air travel–especially trips with long flights as this one was–is the opportunity for uninterrupted reading time. No inflight movies for me. As soon as the flight attendant announces that we can use our electronic devices, I’m happy to open up my Kindle and lose myself. I was fortunate on this trip to have just started reading Carol Bodensteiner’s Go Away Home, a work of historical fiction about the coming of age of a young woman in the World War I era that is loosely based on the life of the author’s grandparents. (See my review of Carol’s book over at Story Circle Book Reviews.)

After I finished the book on the last leg of our flight home I closed the cover of my Kindle and sat back to digest what I had just read. I basked in the afterglow of a story well told, of a novel I had been able to immerse myself in, of a yarn whose ending was bittersweet both in the story itself as in my sorrow that it was over.

I couldn’t help think of the historical fiction work I began a few years ago about the life of my own grandmother–a woman who raised three children on her own on the hot and dusty Saskatchewan prairie through the years of the Great Depression. I set that work on the back burner in favour of the contemporary work I’ve been focusing on more recently but my grandma’s story continues to call to me. The call seemed even louder having just read Bodensteiner’s novel and with the memories still fresh in my mind of just-toured museums in Ottawa where the past was brought to life.

Since we got home I’ve been immersed in reading about the history of the small town where Grandma raised her family and the stories of those who once lived there, taking notes, and imagining life on the Saskatchewan prairie during those hot, dusty, difficult years. Life was hard, to be sure, especially for a woman left to raise a young family without the support of her husband, but I’ve been struck by the accounts of fun, laughter, and good times told by those who lived through those years. These people did not find happiness in wealth, comfort, or abundance–that’s a good thing because there was none of that to be found. Instead, they appreciated simple and priceless things like family, community, faith, and the kind of fun to be had that didn’t cost a cent. I believe we can learn much from these stories from yesteryear.

I leave you today with a photograph of me taken on our Ottawa trip on Parliament Hill next to a statue commemorating the proclamation of women as “persons” under Canadian law on October 18, 1929–a proclamation that came four days after the birth of my mom, my grandma’s second child, and less than three years before the sudden death of my grandfather. I can’t help but wonder what my grandma thought about the changing landscape for women, or if it really affected the young prairie farm wife much at all, busy as she was tending to her growing family and simply trying to survive.

I think it’s time to dust off my notes, timelines, photographs, early chapters and continue the work of telling her story.

Fulfillment

Sometimes I can scarce believe it’s been only four months since I retired; four months since my thoughts were constantly consumed with project plans, deadlines, and other people’s priorities. I spent twenty-five years in the corporate world and, for the most part, received great fulfillment from working hard and seeing a project come together successfully but that world seems far away now.

These days the only deadlines I’m concerned about are what’s coming ripe in my garden and what’s available at the farmer’s market. The project plans I think about when I wake up in the morning have to do with canning, freezing, and dehydrating nature’s bounty.

I’ve spent this morning in the kitchen tending to a big batch of strawberries that were just picked at a local farm last evening. Jewel-toned jars of strawberry jam sit cooling on my kitchen counter right now and I’ve just put two large trays of strawberries in the freezer; I’ll transfer the frozen berries to other containers later today.

Now, I’m getting ready to head out to my garden to harvest basil to put in the dehydrator to use in sauces and recipes later in the year.  I’ll also pick some lettuce for a big supper salad and perhaps some Swiss Chard and peas as well.

This new work is different–it’s slow work, meditative work, and it leaves me physically tired and sore at the end of the day sometimes. I’m finding great fulfillment in tending my garden, cooking and serving the freshest ingredients, and preserving fruit and veggies for the future. The satisfication I receive from a days work tending the garden or canning jam is huge and it’s very different from the fulfillment I got from the corporate world for so many years.

It’s personal. It’s lasting It’s like a return to my self.

I can’t help but reflect back to when I was a stay-at-home mom with two young children. In some ways it seems like I’ve come full circle, though that path to get here has been long, rough, and filled with detours. I felt a measure of fulfilment at the labour of my hands back then, though circumstances were such that I longed, and needed, something more.

I can’t help but remember my mom labouring in a sweltering kitchen to can fruit and vegetables. I wonder what occupied her mind as she stood at the stove stirring a pot of bubbling jam. Did she find herself longing for something else too?

I can’t help but consider my grandma–a stern and distant woman who raised three children on her own during the Dirty Thirties on the Saskatchewan prairie after losing her husband a few months after the birth of her third child. I wonder if all of the homemaking chores were just that to her–work–or if she found a measure of fulfilment in tending her garden and preserving its bounty.

I feel blessed on this quiet, albiet busy, morning that the work I am doing today allows time for me to reflect and remember.