How Quaint
I still put up jam and pickles every summer. Apparently that makes me a curiosity.
An annual ritual has begun here. It’s a ritual so old and deeply ingrained that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t do it. It began in my childhood and has continued through my whole life.
It’s the ritual of preserving the harvest or, as it’s better known in the South, “puttin’ up.”
What in the World is “Puttin’ Up?”
Puttin’ up is our way of describing the process of canning or freezing the abundance of fresh produce that comes at this time of year. It’s something I started learning at an early age. When I was a child in a small rural town, we didn’t have access to everything under the sun at the grocery store the way that we do today. Back then, if you wanted pink-eye purple-hull peas in January, you’d better freeze some in July. And freeze produce we did!
I have lots of memories of helping my mother “put up” during summer vacations. I especially remember peas and butterbeans spread out on newspapers on the floor in our den underneath the window air conditioner. You had to keep them cool, you know, so they wouldn’t “go through a heat.” Let the peas and butterbeans get too warm, and they’d sour before you finished shelling. Not good.
I Always Enjoyed Shelling Peas and Butterbeans
Shelling was my favorite puttin’ up activity. I think that’s because you could do it indoors under the air conditioner while watching television. I’ve never been much of an outdoorsy girl. Perspiration? Ewww. Which is why I never liked helping with the corn.
I vividly remember sitting at the picnic table in our backyard, shucking corn. Corn was always ready for pulling during the hottest part of the summer, and shucking it made a huge mess, so you had to do it outdoors. And Mama was very particular about the corn. You had to get every single silk out of that corn. It took a while.
And did I mention it was hot out there? Also, mosquitoes. It was enough to make you seriously consider the importance of freezing corn for the coming year.
Just Part of the Rhythm of Rural Life
Even though there were parts I didn’t like, I mostly enjoyed that time of year. It was simply a part of the rhythm of life in a small, southern town during the 1960s. And the economic status of your family didn’t matter at all. Everyone “put up” for the winter. It was just that simple.
And I find now that I am, after all, grateful for the lessons I learned on those hot, humid summer days. The importance of preparing for the future, of putting something aside when you have extra for times that are leaner.
It May Be Quaint, But It’s a Great Skill to Have
Often when I mention that I still make jams and pickles and freeze vegetables, people look at me curiously. Some have even said, “Oh, how quaint.” Or “I didn’t know people did that anymore.” I even had one person say to me, “Oh, you mean they still make canning jars?” I just laugh with them and go right on about canning and freezing.
Even though it may seem that food preservation is a skill that has completely faded away, many people continue to do it. But it is interesting that, in the mainstream, it seems to have gone from everyday and unremarkable to charming.
It isn’t only canning, either. Lots of mundane skills are being lost. Fewer people can sew on a button these days, or darn a sock, or even replace a worn-out shoelace. Those tasks used to be simply what was done, because why would you pay for a new pair of shoes when you could simply add new shoelaces? Now the choice is more often to buy a replacement. And somewhere along the way, anyone who still does it the old way—repair/reuse, preserve/freeze—quietly became a curiosity.
Everything Old Is New Again
I sometimes see videos online where someone, genuinely delighted, has captioned a jar of jam, a bowl of mayonnaise, or a tub of butter with something like “Wait, you can just MAKE this?” And I love that for them, truly. There’s real joy in figuring out you can feed yourself with your own two hands. I’d rather they find that joy than go on never knowing that virtually every single prepared item in the grocery store can be made with your own two hands. Lessons I learned in childhood have landed on them fifty years later as a delightful new discovery.
Some years I do a lot more than others. Jams, preserves, pickles, relishes, salsas. And I always freeze peas and butter beans if I can find them here in north Georgia. But, regardless, I almost always start the canning season with strawberry jam.
Good old-fashioned (quaint?) strawberry jam. One of the first recipes new canners often try because it’s an easy win. And once you’ve finished your first ever batch of jam and counted each little “ping” of jar lids sealing, you’re hooked.
If you’d like to make a batch yourself, the recipe for Homemade Strawberry Jam is on the blog: https://www.lanascooking.com/strawberry-jam/
If your family still puts up anything- peas, pickles, tomatoes, jam- I’d love to hear what and how. And if you grew up somewhere that this never stopped being normal, tell me. I have a feeling south Georgia isn’t the only place that never got the memo it was supposed to be quaint.