The second part of growing a yard-full of fruit and vegetables is preserving them. Again, I have to thank my parents for that knowledge as well as for the love of gardening. Mom and Dad canned everything from fish to salsa. When Mom got sick, Dad took the reins. He had a steam juicer to make juice for jellies, a strainer to make puree, huge pots and small ones. (I recently found a small Presto cooker at a Goodwill and packed it in my suitcase when I flew home.) Then there is the pressure canner. I had a big yellow one that I used so much the bottom became slightly rounded. I was in heaven when I found a brand new pressure canner at a garage sale in Kirtland, Ohio. They had a bunch of canning jars, too. I am still using both.

Some things are easier to can than others. There was a time, not too many years ago, when a national chain grocery was selling one pound packages of baby carrots extremely cheap. All I had to do was wash and blanch the carrots and then fill the jars. Ten pounds of pressure and about thirty minutes later, voila! Canned carrots.

On the other hand, meats take a great deal of preparation. When turkeys were cheap, I bought a couple and then the canner doubled as a cooker. Boil the birds, debone them and then prepare the canner to do what it was made to do. Later, when I wanted to make turkey salad sandwiches, I pulled out a jar rather than a dinky $2.00 can of chicken. I was able to make enough turkey salad for everybody in the family.

Probably the vegetable that is the most complicated to preserve is the poor little maligned beet. That’s one reason I prefer my beets to grow larger rather than smaller. You have to pull them out of the ground, cut the greens off (at least an inch above the beet), wash them, brush them, boil them (alas, the poor canner again). After they have cooled, you peel them, and then cut or slice them, fill the jars and pressure-can them. Nothing finer with dinner in the winter.

Pickles are comparatively easy with only the preparation becoming complicated. It takes a bit of time to turn a cucumber into a pickle, but very little time to preserve it in a jar. (I can taste my tiny kosher dill pickles as I type this.)

I have learned some valuable lessons over the years, too. The main one is the power of a pressure cooker or canner. The old fashioned cookers have a gasket, a gauge that tells you what the psi, (or pressure per square inch), inside the canner is, and a small ‘button’ that is a failsafe if that psi gets too high. My dad accidentally tested one when he was cooking beans one day. I don’t remember just what kind they were, but they were altogether disgusting when the ‘button’ blew out and the beans pasted themselves on the ceiling above the stove! I watch my gauge carefully.

Man has used various forms of preserving food products for hundreds of years. Today we have even more ways to preserve greater varieties of food, more safely than ever before. If someone in your family is salt intolerant, as is in my family, then you can preserve without salt. You can adjust recipes somewhat, you can stock up on things you enjoy, and appreciate the bounty of your own efforts when the shelves at Wal-Mart or Food City are empty.

Susan Kite is the author of five fiction books, a novelette in the upcoming book, Zorro, the Daring Escapades, and a children’s book, The Legend of Billy Bob Flybottom, coming out in the fall. You can find out more at www.bookscape.net.