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In the early fifties, my grandparents were still living from the land except for a few items that they bought when a trip was made to town once a week.

They planted, harvested and canned everything in sight and there was plenty that filled the huge pantry when we were through. And, oh, the many jars looked so pretty and perfect and tasted just wonderful through the winter. Plus, there were extras for her holiday guests to take home with them.

Grandma had a huge pressure cooker and she kept it going in the late summer. Sometimes it would build up too much pressure and blow everything to smithereens but most times, things went easy. Now, that was hard work back then but, it had to be done.

I remember the tubs of cucumbers that had to be soaked for two or three days scattered around the house, to make pickles.

We picked the fields of peas, beans, tomatoes, corn, you name it, it was planted. The trees that bore fruit were plentiful, also. Watermelons made wonderful watermelon rind preserves and the fig preserves were to die for with a good hot buttered biscuit. Plums were used to make jelly and there were plenty of those, also.

Mr. Traxler with the peach orchard, always came with two or three bushels of ripe peaches to be spiced and put in jars - some were canned whole and others were quartered. Blackberries were abundant and in the wintertime, a blackberry cobbler was a real treat. Jam could be made from them, also.

Yes, canning was worth it back then. Since, I haven't canned anything but some pear chutney and pepper jelly just to see if I could do it and I did.

You can make a soup base with tomatoes, butterbeans, corn and whatever else, like okra, you want to put in it.

Oh, sometimes, some of the jars would explode but that was to be expected.

The one thing I hated we couldn't can were the peanuts we had just pulled from the ground. Grandpa would have a peanut party, using the old cast iron, wash pot and fill it with peanuts that we would boil and eat until we were sick. The rest of the peanuts were dried and put in the crib, along with the dried corn, to make peanut brittle with. The corn we fed to the chickens.

Sorghum cane was planted every year and every fall my grandpa made pints and pints of molasses to use at home and give away.

We didn't can the potatoes, though. They were put in the root cellar and stayed just perfect all winter.

Today, most people freeze food and take it out of the deep freeze as they need it. I believe that is what I would do, now. If you read instructions well, they will turn out just wonderful. I haven't tried it but my sister did every summer before she got sick and it was like having fresh vegetables on the tables.

So, the only way I would can now is if I had so much, after giving as much as I could away, I do believe I would use that method.

Canned fresh food, I must admit, is worth it. Not long ago, a friend of mine gave me a jar of home canned green beans. They were the best I had eaten in many years.

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