Canning Season

Canning SeasonFall is the season of fruit, lots of fruit. And most fruit doesn’t keep well on its own (except for Melrose apples, folk say that only a rock keeps better than a Melrose). Plums and pears and early apples need to be dried or crushed for cider or made into pies or canned as sauces and butters.

This weekend it was time to deal with the plum crop, time to make plum butter and Autumn butter – a blend of plum, apples and pear. Problem is, butters need to be in jars and I was low on jars. This pretty much happens every year. You see, I give away some of the jam I make. Every time a jar is handed to a friend or the UPS man or the mail delivery lady – that means a canning jar goes out of circulation. After a while, I need to buy some new jars. Normally this is not a problem. I just mosey down to our local jar emporium, also known as the hardware store, and I pick up what I need.

But not this year, not in 2020. All those folks who discovered gardening last spring and summer seem to have discovered canning this fall. And they bought jars. The shelves are bare of the standard jars. I hunted for pint jars and ended up getting fancy ones, packaged in a four pack for the same price of a dozen of the plain ones. But I wasn’t complaining. I was glad to find any jars and at least new jars come with the lid and the rim. I didn’t see boxes of lids or rims anywhere.

I thought I had enough jars, but the plum crop was a big one and I cooked up a vat of plum butter. As I started canning, I realized I was short about four jars. I started hunting the shelves in the kitchen and pantry. I found one, then two. I searched my office and discovered a collection of pencils residing in a pint jar. I dumped the pencils into a mug and liberated the jar. One more, I just needed one more. Somewhere in this house, there had to be a pint jar. Back to the kitchen, rummaging through the pantry drawers. There it was, a pint jar halfway full of a golden crab apple liquor. I’m not one to toss out an elixir like that, so I poured the lovely apple scented alcohol into a leftover bottle, washed out the jar and put it in the hot water canner to sterilize.

Today’s canning project is done. The jars are cooling on the counter. I am finished for now. But, If you see pint jars at a local hardware store, let me know. After all there will be boiled cider to can in October. Harvest season isn’t near over yet…