Remember my amazing mom

Working in my garden and anticipating (hoping) having some tomatoes to can this summer, brings back memories of the first time I remember mom canning (except for maybe jelly). We had always had a garden, but not a large one, as we lived in the suburbs and then on 2-acres, and with a large family, there wasn’t a lot left over to can. What extra produce there was, or what we went and picked from orchards, etc., went into the freezer.

The summer before I turned 10 we moved to Maryland (and a farm). When we first moved in (after several weeks of camping and hotel living while we looked for a house) it was August (with no air conditioning) and our furniture, etc. had not arrived from Indiana. So there was my mom, with six kids ranging in age from 13 – 2, no stove, no beds, no nothing (I don’t remember if we had a refrigerator or not). We were literally camping out in our tents and cooking over an open fire and a camp stove.

Some neighbors offered mom a bunch of tomatoes. Raised on a farm during the depression (and having six hungry kids and a husband to feed), Mom wasn’t one to pass up such a bounty. So armed with our Coleman camp stove, a large pan and some canning jars (I assume she went out and bought those), she set to work (outside in the yard), canning tomatoes.

When our furniture arrived, we still didn’t have a stove (our stove in Indiana was built in, so I guess we had to go buy one and they were waiting for something). But we did have our freezer. More bounty was offered from the neighbors in the form of all the Silver Queen sweet corn we wanted to pick. Mom was deterred at first, because she didn’t have a stove to blanch the corn before freezing it, but the neighbor told her she never blanched her corn and it always turned out great. So Dad took us down to pick corn, and what we didn’t devour at the supper table, Mom set about putting in the freezer for winter enjoyment.

_{P.S. I still refuse to plant anything but Silver Queen. :-D}

This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom, mostly because it’s one of the few (informal ones) of her with all of her kids together. It was taken Easter morning as we went out the door to church. Actually, now that I think about it, it was probably taken when we got home from church – I can’t imagine that we were ready early enough to pose for a picture before church.

My youngest sister was 3 weeks old in this picture. I was looking at it last night amazed at how Mom managed to get all 6 of us all dressed up for Easter while taking care of a newborn. (To give my dad the credit due him, it did help that he was the kind of dad that helped, rather than expecting her to do it all.)

Mom made the white coat that I have on (I’m the one in the middle at the back), the lavender coat my sister E has on, and possibly the navy coat that J is wearing. I can’t say for sure, but I remember her making my coat, and I think she made it for me (rather than for my older sister), which meant that she made it that year, which adds to my amazement.

I still have that coat, and a lot of other things that she made for me/us.