Welcome to my Tree House!

About me:

My name is Theresa, aka "Tree" to some longtime friends and a few relatives.

I'm a (mostly) stay-at-home-mom of two.  My passions include my family, my faith, and living in a simple manner that respects the blessings we have been given.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them, springing fresh from the Word

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day

Last night my son asked me, "Why do we can?"

I wondered, "Do you mean what is the purpose of canning?  Or, why do WE can?"

It turned out that he meant, "What is the purpose?" but it started me thinking about the philosophy of canning in this age.

First, the actual reason for canning is to preserve food for an extended length of time.  This means keeping everything clean while working, sterilizing jars and lids to destroy harmful bacteria, and processing for the right length of time at the right temperature.  This preserves the food and keeps us from getting sick when we eat it.

High acid foods, such as traditional tomatoes, have enough acid that they can be processed in a boiling water-bath. You put the tightly closed jars in boiling water so the jars are completely submerged, then leaving them in there until the middle of the contents of each jar reaches a high enough temperature to kill botulism and other bacteria.  Due to the high-acid content, it doesn't have to be as hot as a low-acid food.

Low-acid foods, such as sweet corn, green beans,  beets, and apparently modern low-acid tomatoes, need a higher temperature to kill the harmful bacteria.  Boiling water-bath doesn't do it.  This can only be achieved under pressure, therefore all low-acid foods have to be processed in a pressure canner, for a certain time and pressure appropriate for your elevation.  (Check with your local extension agent if you need specific details for your location!),

Okay, so now the philosophy of canning

Food preservation used to be very important for survival.  You couldn't just pop over to the nearest Super Store whenever you got hungry.  My daughter and I are reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House In the Big Woods.  In it, Pa makes two trips during the year to the nearest town, which is only seven miles away.  Only two trips.  Going there was a big deal and took the entire day.

If you wanted to eat, you grew something and found a way to keep enough of it so it would last until next year when you could harvest more.  If you didn't store it right you probably went hungry.

We don't have to do that, even In our household.  We can because we feel strongly about a few things:

1. Knowing where our food comes from.
2. Food grown locally is healthier and tastes better.

Plus, we love to garden, love seeing things grow and ripen.  But gardening successfully can be a lot of hard work.  I've gardened most of my life, and we've done this seriously since 1998.  After all that work, you want to make the most of what you've grown.

It is important to me to provide quality food to my family.  I like knowing where the food I am feeding them has been.  Even though after a few weeks of canning, my kids start to say, "Mom, do you have to can today?"  Or, as my daughter put it recently, "No canning today, Mom!"  However, they don't complain when winter comes and we have salsa, spaghetti sauce, sweet corn, peaches...  And they taste so much better than what you would buy in the store!

Children should grow up knowing that food is supposed to taste good, not just be something that you have to shove in your body in order to survive.

It's also economical to grow and process your own food.  There can be an initial investment, with jars, a canner, lids.  If you look around, though, you can find good used supplies.  Both of my pressure canners happened to come from my mom and my husband's mom, and there are other older women out there who would love to pass on their equipment to someone who will use it.

Canning jars are not cheap at the store.  I ran an ad in our local paper, looking for canning jars.  I had several calls from older women who just wanted someone to take the jars and use them because, "No one cans anymore, so I didn't know who to give them to!"  They wouldn't even let me pay them for the jars!

Even if you have to buy your equipment, it's a long-term investment.  The cost diminishes with every season that you use it!  The only annual expense is buying new "flats" for the lids.  Once upon a time, reusable lids with rubber rings were what was used, and if you look online they are available still/again.  My friend uses those all the time and she shared some with me.  They worked fine.

So we can because I love my family and I love to garden, and processing our own food is where the two come together.  Thanks be to God!