The art of canning

I have a long history of canning. I grew up on a small farm and I can’t remember a time when my mother didn’t can garden produce in the summertime.

I wonder how many thousands of beans I have snipped in my lifetime. I know as a child I felt helping with the canning was a chore, but we all had to help when Mom had canning to do.

Green beans were the big thing; quarts and quarts of beans. We also cut corn off the cob so she could can it. We slipped skins from beets so she pickled them. We picked cucumbers for dill pickles. I grew up on a strawberry farm and picked gallons of strawberries.

Much o...