The simple joy of home-canning lends meaning to family life

By Robbi Blessin

My sister and I and our collective four kids were canning beans this weekend. Seems crazy, as you can get green beans for $1 per can from the store, but for some reason we hate the taste of those beans and can our own.

It was hot and beautiful outside, the kids played in the pool, ran in and out wondering what we were up to as we snapped 60 pounds of beans with our mother, their grandmother. Canning beans is a big job and it took us all day Sunday and Monday afternoon, and we ran out of jars before beans. But we had good snacks, drinks, and company to make the time go by.

It may seem crazy, but it was one of the best Sundays on record for me. Not only do we get the joy of producing our own food to feed our famlies the rest of the year and the joy of spending time with each other shooting the breeze, I know our children will remember this, just as we remember from our childhood with our mother, who would grow her own garden and can everything. Our children will remember, and there will never be anything like the flavor of home canned green beans.

It seems so many families have forgotten these things, our society now mainly creates memories by spending money - movies, cars, trips. But it is all these homegrown things - food, quilts, crafts, talk, play - that bind us to our roots and our children in a way that can’t be explained. And every time we open a jar of home canned green beans for dinner, we taste the memory.

Robbi Blessin is a certified public accountant and stay-at-home mom of one son, Jonah. Robbi, her husband Barry, and her son Jonah live in Nampa, ID.

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