It’s been an interesting summer with covid practices, harder for some than others, I suppose. For my husband and I, it has been a staycation, the kind where you stay at home, though it hasn’t been much of a vacation.

While some of our family have been able to go to a cottage or their trailer, the same has not been true of us. I’ve been writing, gardening and canning, pretty much in that order.

I’ve been to St. Jacobs’ Farmers Market a couple of times, always with my mask on. One day my friend Carolyn, from church, purchased the cucumbers and peppers we needed at a private farm and they were good too. Such variety band colour at market, and always so many more people there who are looking for the same items. My trips were to get what I needed and get home to start on the process for the day, which often takes hours.

Our eldest daughter and son-in-law inherited a fence full of grape vines when they bought their first home in 2011. And so, by invitation, we go there and pick grapes each summer, often bringing a friend or two and family member with us.

We pick grapes, cook them to extract the juice and freeze most of the juice for winter and also make some jelly. Yum!

pickles by Zoom

Over the last number of years, my friend Doris has joined me in my canning venture, most often in my kitchen, but that was not to be. Carolyn, a new friend from church, proposed we do pickles by Zoom. Doris joined us for the first part when we did the cutting of cucumbers and salting them, and Carolyn  and I continued on with another session after lunch when we prepared jars, mixed spices and brine and got the actual cooking process going. Miraculously, as we talked during the cutting process, no one nicked their fingers and at the end of the day we had 15 or 17 jars of bread and butter pickles.

lots of market produce

It’s a lot of work and I’m always glad to put away the canning kettles and look over my cold room shelves and what I’m put in the freezer. Unless you engage in food preservation it would be easy to complain about the price of canned goods.  But I don’t. It’s always good to have a shelf full of good food to take us through fall and winter, and we enjoy those foods so much more.