Granny-Nanny Times: In the Land of Plenty

I just got back from spending four days in Pennsylvania with my brother, David and his companion, Peggy. Our sister, Elaine was also there. I went to help with harvesting and canning the produce of his garden and fruit trees. What delights awaited me there! Hungry? Want some lunch? Just walk out to the garden and pick some corn, a few ripe tomatoes, some squash and a small bowlful of green beans. On your way back to the cabin, snag a few of the red raspberries and pop them into your mouth. MMMMM!

When I first arrived David and Peggy showed me around the garden. My favorite part was the bean house. This was a loose, open structure made from ten foot tall stalks of bamboo. The bean vine grew up the walls of the "house" with the bean pods hanging down within in easy reach of the harvester. Double fencing surrounded the bean vines to keep out the deer, abundant in that part of western Pennsylvania. When the beans are ripe they are black. The original beans for this year's crop came from Native American Indians who were friends and working associates of Peggy's a few years back .

We processed about one and a half bushels of tomatoes. We canned tomato juice, some whole tomatoes and several jars of salsa made entirely of ingredients from the garden. One machine was indispensable to our work: the Squeezo. Peggy inherited this piece of equipment from her mother. On the top sits a hopper and a wooden mallet is used to push the fruit or vegetable down against the grinder. The handle is hand cranked--woman-powered. The mashed food comes out an opening on the front and to the side the waste parts twist out and fall into the bowl. Fuel for the compost barrel.

Some of the pears were ripe so David picked a basketful to be used to make "fruit leather"-- a homemade version of fruit roll-ups, but without heaps of sugar and preservatives. We washed the fruit, then cut out any suspicious spots, then pushed the slices through the Squeezo. We had a big pot of pulp to which David added a bit of sugar, some pectin, then boiled for a few minutes. After it cooled a bit he poured small amounts on to the six layers of the dehydrator. David let the machine run over night and in the morning we peeled off the thin layers of fruit leather. It was delicious!

I came home wanting to grow a huge garden--I could do that at this time of the year in Florida. I wanted to grow heaps and heaps of tomatoes and get canning equipment to "put them up" for the winter. I wanted to plant apple trees and pear trees and buy a dehydrator to make fruit leather. I wanted to live in a real log cabin in the woods. Well, that's not gonna happen. But it's OK. I understand my impulses: when I go to the opera I want to be an opera singer. We know how likely that is to happen.