Canning for One... or Two

Small batch preservation is absolutely worth it

There comes a time in October when the basil can’t pretend anymore.

Even the lightest caress of frost, barely enough to raise the hairs on the proverbial arms of its neighboring parsley, is enough to send basil into a death spiral. More than an hour of that, and she’s done. Dead, inside and out.

Our world narrows as the days shorten. We are still two full months from the True Dark of late December, but frost has arrived — albeit only light enough to slay my basil — and our days are a solid six hours shorter than they were on Solstice.

The time of abundance has passed. The vibrant colors of tomatoes and squash, peppers and wild plums, have passed to the equally vibrant colors of the dying leaves all around us. But within a week or so, those colors will fade to brown, then black as the White Queen advances amidst a flurry of snow.

These days, I wander into the garden more out of wistfulness and habit than harvesting intent. I’ve already gathered up all the unripe tomatoes and peppers and green beans, and monitor the decay of everything else. Each day another falls, like desperate dancers after a brief solo in the spotlight.

A sweet melancholy is settling in — but so is gratitude. The world outside is slipping into sleep. But inside my little house, the vibrance of the past seasons sits comfortably within my pantry, my fridge, my freezer. I am well stocked. I am whole.

Once, I canned and preserved with the zeal of a convert. I suspect those of you who can your own food have, too. There’s always that one year when you put up 23 gallons of peaches or tomatoes or dill pickles, only realizing several years later — jars still on the shelf — that maybe you ought to have stuck closer to two gallons… or less.

I no longer can for crowds. These days I can and preserve for one. Or sometimes two. Some jars aren’t made for potlucks. They wait for just the right person.

Maybe it’s two jars of wild plum jam. Maybe a blend of homemade tea infused with magical powers to lift spirits that only I know the secrets to. Or a single jar of pickles with just the right touch of sugar to delight just the right palate.

My refrigerator, my pantry, my freezer stand laden with little delights. Pickled sungold tomatoes. Fermented sweet corn. Sour cucumber pickles. Dilly beans. Cowboy candy, a zippy concoction of fiery jalapenos and sweet vinegar. Frozen pesto. Blocks of herbed butter. Jars of dried Hidasta beans. Rows of cured Hidatsa squashes. A pile of black walnuts. A jar of dried chokecherries, and many, many jars of dried herbs for both cooking and tea.

A jar on a quiet shelf can smuggle summer into January.

Yeast, vinegar, fermentation, sugar, salt. Time. These are my constant friends, my handmaidens in my art as I playfully work to please my inner muse. They teach me patience, and require my understanding of their needs, their wants, their desires. When to tend, when to let them be. In the darkness they transform, becoming stronger and more resilient to the pull of decay.

Often they emerge mellower, softer, calmer in flavor and texture and attitude. Mead is an excellent example of this: It’s undrinkable in its first year. My best honey wines, the ones that have transported me to farway places, required five years to truly blossom into what they could be.

At first such patience needles you. We are all impatient beings, we humans. At least at first. But patience, once learned, is rarely forgotten. Now five years is nothing to me, like waiting in line for a sandwich.

Mead, wine, cheese, friendships, love. All are slow-made things, worth waiting for.

I made a batch of elderberry wine in the fall of 2012. It came out tannic and tart and snappy. When I first opened it in winter 2013 as I was planning my tour for Duck, Duck, Goose, I suspected that this wine, difficult to drink then, would mature into something extraordinary.

Yesterday I opened a bottle, 13 years later. The wine had matured into something very much like a Spanish grand rioja: assured, dry, with curves in the right places to smooth over those spots where the wine was still a touch flinty.

That wine is a masterpiece of my art, a combination of luck, hope, skill and most of all, patience. And I have two bottles left. Who might I open them with? Only time will tell.

For now, they rest near a string of dried prairie turnips and a jar of wild plums, holding their promise through the long winter nights.