The Mysterious Popping Sound in the Night

Last night, as I sat quietly sipping on some coffee and reading In The Land of Invented Languages, I kept hearing the sweet 'ththththpop' of canning jars sealing. Yesterday, my garden friends and I spent eight hours canning tomato sauce made from the almost three bushels of tomatoes that we picked from our garden this week. Canning tomatoes is not on my list of top 20 things that I enjoy doing, but it was good to share my kitchen with friends and to preserve some garden goodness.

It seems that canning is a rather lost art in my generation. Last summer was the first time I had ever preserved anything (I made strawberry jam) and when I had questions, I inevitably had to ask someone older than myself. There are bizarre looking tools of the trade and an entire canning vocabulary to take up. The process itself is time consuming and often difficult. There is food splatter and mess, there are heavy pots and hot water, and sometimes there's intense pressure to move quickly so that things stay as sterile as possible (this pressure is intensified when you don't really know what you're doing!).

Our canning adventures yesterday were fraught with many questions, but we persevered and succeeded in making over 20 quarts of tomato sauce for our four families to enjoy. Though no one in our gardening circle grew up learning the art of canning and preserving, most of us will tackle any kind of learning curve to become more efficient stewards of our resources.

Though the education and the fresh vegetables are great, our gardening adventures are more about community. We can buy a book about canning and we can buy a jar of tomato sauce, but we can't buy fellowship. And fellowship is the best part.