While I was on a high adventure hike in the Uintas, Diane was home drying some beautiful appricots she picked. As Aprilyn mentioned, it is time for fall canning/drying once again. I don't know if my kids have good memories of canning season at our house or not, but we put up several things including green beans, peaches, pears, corn, tomatoes, grape juice and of course, strawberry jam. We probably still have some of those jars of food buried deep in our storage. We probably even have some jars of food DuRell put up years ago. Since eating was a family affair, we thought canning should be a family affair too. It was usually long days and in to the night before the project was complete, but together, we put up a lot of food. If you counted the cost of your time, perhaps it was not "profitable", but it was something we could all pitch in and do together. Perhaps lessons were learned in the process. Perhaps not. I still have good memories of sitting around at Grannie's home in the summer snapping green beans for canning. Neighbors would drop in and pick up a bowl of beans and start snapping as they visited and caught up on the news from each other. I learned that what I considered hard work was and enjoyable social experience for others.

I can see it all now if families were inclined to do home canning. Each person would have an IPOD plugged into their ears listening to their own music. This senario misses out on one of the blessings of canning together as a family.