Canning season (by Marybeth)

Cans of food lining the root cellar shelves

There are few things in life that put crafting for Traditional Necessities, or life in general, on hold.  One of the most predictable is the arrival of canning season.  As the summer days grow shorter and mornings grow cooler, the counter fills with a bountiful harvest from the gardens and orchards that must be put up before winter.  Canning season usually starts for me in mid-July when the apricots, our first fruit of the season here, ripen.  Unfortunately the late spring freeze nipped the blossoms of the apricots, plums and peaches this year, so canning season started a little late.  But my kitchen is now overflowing with green beans, zucchini, kale, peaches (from a nearby orchard that escaped the late freeze), pears, apples, pumpkins, and tomatoes, with so much more fresh produce yet to come.  So daily I wake up to search for new recipes for canning—this year peach salsa and spiced peaches are being added to the list—and I  start washing, chopping, packing jars and processing food to line the root cellar shelves for winter.  It is such a wonderful feeling to go down to the cool, dark root cellar during the coldest days of winter and pick out onions, garlic, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, and winter squash to add to a fulfilling stew that bubbles on the stove and lends a savory scent to the air when I walk into the house with an armload of firewood.

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Piles of green beans waiting to be canned

Cherry tomatoes loaded in the dehydrator