A Cellar Full of Summer

Warm greetings from our Amish community here in the Heartland, where Fall has settled in and the sun has been out nearly every day this week. After the rains left the ground so saturated and the mud deeper than anyone here is used to, this string of bright, dry days has been a welcome sight, and the lanes and barnyards are finally firming up underfoot.

Last week we finished our series on the ways this community works together, and this week we begin a new one on Amish food and kitchen traditions. There is no better place to start than the cellar. The last jars of the year are going onto the shelves this week, mostly apples and the final tomatoes, and the canning season is drawing to a close. A family here may put up several hundred quarts before it is over, and every one of them will be opened at the table before the garden gives again.

A girl learns to can at her mother’s elbow. One woman recalled that her mother started her on jams and jellies, a gentle place to begin, since the batches are small and the reward is sweet. She worked her way up to the bigger jobs from there, and peaches are still her favorite thing to put up each year.

The women here will tell you that the hardest part of canning is that it will not wait. "When things are ripe they need to be canned, pronto," one mother said, laughing at herself. "I can’t procrastinate!" So the planning starts back in the Spring. Another told us she never plants more than two rows of sweet corn at a time and spreads her plantings out, so the whole garden does not come ripe in the same week and bury her in work.

Corn canning day is the one that takes every hand, and whole families work it together. Some gather the ears and others husk them out on the porch. Inside, the corn is cut from the cob and packed into jars, while one steady soul keeps an eye on the pressure gauge. The little ones have their part too. One girl of nine loves to wash the cucumbers and cut them up when her mother makes pickles. Ask what makes the work easier and the answer comes quickly, a good pressure canner and a jar lifter.

Not every batch goes to plan, and the women can smile about it now. One still remembers the day she was canning ketchup and scalded her arm. Another lost part of a batch of peas when the jars did not all stay sealed. And nearly every kitchen shares the same small confession. "Every year I reuse a few old lids," one woman admitted, "and every year I am sorry I did."

Recipes travel between communities the way news does. One woman came home with a recipe for pickled cantaloupe, something she had never heard of before and now makes herself. In some settlements, families also can in tin cans in place of glass jars, and those cans go to Christian Aid Ministries to be shared with the poor.

When we asked about the most peaceful part of the season, one woman did not have to think. It is sitting down with a bowl of peaches to peel while the jars she has already processed cool on the counter, and hearing the ping of each lid as it seals. Every woman who cans knows that sound. It means the work held.

And what goes through a woman’s mind during those long days over a steaming canner? "The heat!" one said. Then she grew quiet and added that she thinks of the children in other countries who go to bed hungry at night. It is hard to stand before full shelves and not think of them.

The shelves are full now, row upon row, and Winter may come when it likes.

Stories from Our Amish Basket Weavers

Here are a few of the most notable moments from the families who weave the beautiful baskets featured on AmishBaskets.com, shared with us this week.

The Mast Family

In the Mast home, Mom reported that she finally got the potatoes dug now that the sun has come out to stay. She had the wash on the line first, and when her youngest daughter came home from school the two of them headed straight for the garden. Three rows gave them better than twenty gallons of potatoes, every one caked in mud, and a few had started to spoil from all the rain. So Mom filled the Maytag washer one more time that day, and this load was potatoes. They dried on tables overnight and are boxed up in the basement now, waiting on a Winter of potato soup.

The Yoder Family

The Yoder family told us they hitched up the horse early in the week and drove over to a neighbor’s orchard to pick apples and the last of the pears. They came home with a sweet smelling buggy, though Dad said the late apples on some of the trees were not ripe yet, so the children have already been promised a second trip. Mom’s brother, who has been helping out at the bulk food store, says the store is not waiting on anyone’s trees. They had apples brought in by the bin, along with the season’s last half bushel boxes of Concord grapes, and he says the grapes go home with nearly every customer who walks past them.

"Love is a fruit in season at all times and within the reach of every hand."

- Amish Wisdom Overheard in the Community.