Someone recently shared a picture of canned goods in her basement. I do not think it was a picture that they took, just one they found. Foods preserved in jars really make a pretty picture. I often went downstairs and just looked at all of the food I had preserved.

We never had much money. Milk checks came twice a month with the first check being the larger one since it was an advance on what would follow. During the summer months especially the second check was small so I learned not to rely on it.

I went to the grocery store with my little red checker — some of you will remember them. You tapped the dollar key to keep track of how much you were spending. I always rounded up or down depending on the price of what I was purchasing. In those days I usually spent twenty dollars a week on groceries. That was all I had to spend.

I recall standing with my checker looking at some Nestle’s Quik. An older gentleman came up behind me and told me to purchase the store brand because it was cheaper. I told him I had a coupon for the Nestle’s Quik so that made it cheaper. He tapped me on the shoulder and told me to keep doing what I was doing — I was doing fine.

Often, I purchased groceries for the month. I never knew how many people I would be feeding. If there was hay out it was not unusual for me to have four or five extra mouths to feed.

When the garden was ready to harvest, I picked beans in the morning and canned them so that I would have my own vegetables.

I also canned corn and beets from the garden. I loved cutting the corn off the cob. I had a bowl that collected the corn. Sometimes I froze the corn as well.

Beets were made into beet pickles. We all liked those. I usually canned the beet greens as well so that I had a variety to choose from. Carrots we stored in a crock in sand throughout the winter. Parsnips could not be dug until after frost.

I remember the neighbor bringing me swiss chard. I had never eaten swiss chard up to this point. I looked in my trusty cookbook to see what to do with it. We ate it with vinegar and salt and pepper. It was tender and delicious.

We had some of our own fruits to can. Apples were plentiful. I started with the Transparents and ended with the Northern Spies. We had plenty of applesauce. The children did not even like the store-bought kind. Of course, I kept some just for eating and some for baking. We also had our own plums. If I canned them, they were purple and very sweet. If I dried them or froze them, they became prunes. So, I got two different fruits in one.

When peaches were in season, we canned them. We had some of our own, but often I bought a bushel to can. Pears came from the trees that grew by the house that is now my daughter’s. We went off the farm to pick cherries and blueberries. Rhubarb came from the farm. I froze packages of that to make sauce and pies. I also picked elderberries from the side of the road to freeze. They made delicious elderberry pot pie. When my father-in-law was in the hospital and refused to eat, I took him some elderberry pot pie. He ate very bit of it and the nurses were very pleased.

My father-in-law always grew his own tomatoes. Although he only put in a few plants we had plenty of our own tomatoes. I loved to can tomatoes. You heated them in water and then slipped the skins off. Sometimes I made tomato juice or V8 juice. I also made spaghetti sauce to can. Rows of tomatoes lined the shelves that my husband built for me in the cellar.

Folks, that is how I made things work. That stretched my budget to feed my family of four plus. Canning was hard work, but it was rewarding. I was at home with the children so that filled my hours.

After a tornado went through this area there were trees down everywhere. We picked blackberries for a couple years while the trees regrew. It was a pleasure to have canned blackberries to eat.

One-year, canning lids were hard to come by. If you saw some you bought them whether you needed them at the moment of not. That year I cut my plums in half to get more in each jar thus saving lids.

Another year sugar was at a premium. That year I used some of the honey from our bees. My son was keeping bees at that point. I had to remember that it took only half the amount of honey. The peaches, pears, and applesauce had a different taste that year, but they were very good. My nephew wanted to know how I got that flavor.

If you were presented with a problem you figured out on your own how to solve it. There were no food banks in those days. There were no free meals being handed out to children.

I always told my husband that we could eat for a long time on what I had preserved. Some of the meals might be rather funny, but we would have enough to eat. I do not think young people think like that today. They are spoiled.

Let me say here that I had not grown up that way either, but I learned. I learned to garden, to can, and to plan ahead. I took care of my family with no help from the government.

Ann Swanson writes from her home in Russell, Pa. Contact at hickoryheights1@verizon.net.