I never would have believed it if someone had told me it was going to happen and even seeing it with my own eyes, I still find it hard to comprehend, but there it is, I’ve turned domestic.Harvest time has come upon us here in the valley and the time has come to try and deal with the huge quantities of fruit that are not only on our property here but also growing wild just about anywhere you look. Be it apple trees which seem to be around every bend in the road or huckle berries, thimble berries, goose berries, plums, pears or whatever else you may want to think of.
The trouble with all this abundance is the fact that it has to be dealt with and time is of the essence. If the produce sits too long it very rapidly become comes food for whatever gets to it first, be it bears, deer, hippies, or whatever kind of produce grabbing characters may happen to come along. Although it is very badly out of character (after all I am a bricklayer, not some kind of mommie’s boy), last week I was forced to deal with an abundance of plums and pears. Never in my life have I done any canning and I certainly didn’t have any intentions of starting, however with a bit of pushing from a bachelor neighbour I decided to give it a go. After all fruit is free and I am Dutch and saving money is what we do.
The real money saving started with a trip to the local canning store in Castlegar to get the needed supplies such as pectin, sugar, spices, lids, rings, lifting devices, canners, and little magnetic thing-a-ma-bobs for lifting hot jar lids out of the water without actually losing any skin to scalding water. And the list goes on. At this point the savings come to about -$63.00 and I don’t actually have any canning done yet. However the real savings started when my son in-law from Leduc showed up on his Harley. Being a rig worker he decided that no real job can be started or even contemplated without a lot of thought. Thought being what it is requires lots of quiet and concentration according to Dwayne which by the way is best done on his Harley. Being that one of the best Toy Runs in the country is held this time of year in this area, we hooked up with a thousand other bikes in Castlegar and after a fine breakfast headed on the road to Nelson the first stop on the run. Savings at this juncture total -$113.63.
We reached Nelson shortly before 11:00 am and after talking to some other biker types we discovered that the annual Hills Garlic Festival was on and you know you can just never have enough garlic. So after a 60 km. ride along Kootenay Lake and great lunch at the Kaslo Hotel overlooking the lake, we headed over the mountains to New Denver and the Garlic Festival. Savings after this little adventure added up to a whopping -$173.87.
After touring the Garlic Festival we got mighty thirsty because garlic flavoured beer just wasn’t what we had in mind. We left New Denver in search of a watering hole and found just what we were searching for in the small town of Silverton. We left Silverton and headed on back to Winlaw after making a stop in the town of Slocan to pick up supper and snack supplies that would enable us to do more heavy thinking about the canning situation. Savings -$211.43.
Now it really was time to recoup some of our losses by doing some serious canning. Sooo... the next day we spent the entire time canning. You know it wasn’t actually all that bad. I think women may have something there, it was kind of fun. We ended up with 15 pints of spiced plum jam, 17 quarts of canned golden plums and 12 quarts of canned pears in brandy. Now you may think that isn’t much but as far as I know, you just can’t buy those kind of homemade preserves anywhere for any price. That’s actually a good thing because those 30 some quarts cost me about $300.00 and at those prices who could afford them?
Wait a minute, I forgot to count the fuel for the bikes.
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