View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

Most days for me just go. Sometimes I am in a fog and just let things happen, other times I realize that time is passing. Time without Erland. And I am overcome. But chores have to be done. Some are easy. Like laundry. I have my laundry room in the basement. This is also where a chest freezer is and above it a shelf where I put my jars of jams and jellies as I can them.

Picking the berries is labor intensive and some years I have to struggle with the mosquitos and flies as I wander with my little pail through the thorny raspberry bushes. I also pick red currants which I mix with the raspberries when I make jam.  The making of the jam is not hard, but it takes a little bit of effort and I have to remind myself why I do this. It isn’t like we can’t buy perfectly good jam in the store. We have enough money and there are no lack of choices on the shelves of the grocery store.

But what tastes better than homemade jam? It smells differently too. Faintly like summer. And the feeling of accomplishment comes both when the jams are put in jars and especially when the jars are lined up on the shelf in the laundry room. I did this. I made jam and put them in jars.

When my parents-in-law lived in this house, the basement was unfinished, except the laundry room. Which was a dusty room filled with shelves and rich with spider webs. On the shelves were jars of all kinds. Some were pickles. Others apple sauce or jam. I was told that at some point before the event of freezers, my mother-in-law also canned meat. The jars were unlabeled so a person had to guess at the contents, peeking through dusty glass. Gradually, I opened all the jars and used most of the contents. It is amazing how long properly canned goods last. Since I have always been a believer in reusing what is available, I washed the jars and reused them when I set about doing my own gardening and canning.

As you all know, I grew up in a suburb of Oslo and my mother never had a vegetable garden. I had never heard of people who canned, but the thought of growing our own food and then preserving it, appealed to me. I had grown tomatoes and was very proud and amazed at how good they tasted. I read in the cookbook given to me as a wedding present that a person could just “pack the tomatoes in jars.” So I did. Washed the jars and just put the tomatoes in them. After a while, I could see that the contents of the jars turned brown. I asked my kind and patient mother-in-law who then taught me the method of canning both tomatoes, cucumbers and berries. And I was hooked.

As the years flew by, I did learn some more tricks. My vegetable garden grew and the basement was divided into actual rooms. I still had dust and spiders, but it was more controlled and with central air and dehumidifier, the basement was less dank. I found myself discussing food preservation methods with my friends. I experimented with various types of vegetables like leeks and celery. I also learned how to freeze them. And now, in the winters, we are almost self-sufficient on vegetables that we put in stews, stir-fries and soup.

But I still have the jars that came with the house when we moved in 48 years ago. Grant told me that the square jars that we have are relics from when coffee came in canning jars. And as I go out into the amazingly fresh summer air without (a true miracle) mosquitos, to pick berries that I later will can, I feel a surge of peace and joy.