alternative futures: we can

22 Apr 2019

this story is inspired by a chat i had last night with my dad. he was telling me about how his mom and godmother used to get loads of peaches and pears and can them. and he and his siblings would peel fruit for hours.

i pulled up a few minutes late. i said thank you to my driver, got all my gear, and walked up front porch.

“hey, dave! is the truck ready?”

he walked around the side of the house, overalls and all.

“sure is. let’s do it.”

we always began canning in late august. the land was overflowing with food and, as always, i thought “how is possible that we could ever run out???”

but i/we knew: summer is only a season. winter is coming and it is not friendly to those who do not prepare.

we parked our flatbed truck and split up our gathering. i had my eye on sweet; him on savory. 100 pounds each was our target.

i grabbed strawberries, blueberries, peaches. the apples were technically ready but it hadn’t frozen enough yet for them to be delicious. dave grabbed beans, peas, onions, peppers. as we both sat back in the cab, we looked at each other with the same side eye.

“i know. slim pickings for this time of year. i hope we’re ahead of the curve enough to get what we need…”

my right eye had already started twitching. it was going to be a long winter.

we bounced our way back to his place where several friends were waiting. while we were gone, they had set up my process gear and their own. the sun was still on his way up (~10am) and we had work to do.

we gave our hugs all around, meditated so that we could each bring our energy to the food that would sustain us once the fields stopped producing, and then got to work. we canned as a community so we could survive as a community.

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resources

• Massachusetts-Grown Produce Availability Calendar

words / writing / post-processing
259w / 11min / 8min