One of Mother’s many household duties during the summer when vegetables and fruits were ripe was to can as many fruits and vegetables as she could. The only canning process available brought with it a tour in the very fires of hell. Vegetables tend to ripen in the hottest part of summer.  We had no propane or natural gas.  Mother cooked on a cast iron, wood-burning cookstove.  To safely can vegetables the stove had to be kept filled with burning wood for as many hours as Mother was canning.  The stove was a black, cast-iron monster which became hot all over when wood was burning casting an aura of heat for many feet around it.  On canning day it was kept filled with wood all day long.

Typical wood-burning cookstove.  The firewood burned in the upper compartment on the right hand side of the stove.  Ashes fell into the lower compartment.  The eye-level compartment was a "warming over"

nce the cooking surface was hot enough, huge pots of water were boiled.  Later vegetables were packed into jars that had been sterilized in that boiling water.  Eight or ten quart jars that had been packed full were put into a big black hermetically sealed steam pressure cooker that was set on the stove with a little water in the bottom of the cooker.  With its lid firmly sealed the water inside soon boiled and became steam. As more water the steam pressure built up inside that cast iron pot. There was a pressure gauge on the cooker’s lid with an ominous ominous red line at the extreme end of the dial.  When a little too much pressure built up a relief valve shot in the lid "popped off" shooting superheated steam out into the room.  Had that pressure relief valve failed the steam would keep on building to some catastrophic limit.  Mother lived in mortal fear that the whole thing was going to explode some day, scalding us all and piercing our bodies with the shrapnel of broken glass and hot steel.

A typical steam canning cooker.  "Pop-off" valve to the right of the steam gauge.

This cycle went on all day long or until she ran out of whatever she was canning.  By that time it was time for Mother to cook supper ("Dinner in those days was food you ate at mid-day) so the fire had to be kept rolling until that was done.  There's no way of knowing what the heat and humidity levels were in that kitchen. It had to have been over 100 degree’s with the humidity being not far behind.

The only jobs I was old enough to do in the canning process was being a "go-fer," washing the jars prior to their being sterilized in the boiling water, shucking ears of corn, and pulling the strings off the green beans. I was too young to cut the kernels off the corncob.

The end result, though, as many women say after delivering a sound, healthy baby, clouded over the memory of those hellishly hot, steam-filled summertime days in the kitchen.  We ate Mother's delicious canned green beans, corn, carrots and applesauce with no thought of sweat running down our cheeks, back and forehead.

A day in that kitchen when Mother canned was a day to be remembered.