The Rainbow in a Box

One of the CSA members got a whole grocery sack full of these long red peppers (on the left) last night and they were so beautiful I ran in the house to get my camera. Unfortunately, she zipped through and picked up before I got back out there. But that's okay, because my own colorful collection of peppers was picturesque, as well.

You see, good eats are not the only reason to join a CSA farm. It's like receiving a rainbow in a box every week.

Those are tomatoes in the top right corner. We've been getting loads of tomatoes this year from the CSA, as well as from those we planted in our own yard. I've been freezing whenever they threaten to overtake me. We've been tossing around the idea of pulling out the canner again. We canned a bit the first few years we returned to Kansas. That would have been when the girls were little, before Munchkin Boy was even born. Sometimes it takes me a while to work up to these things. A project has to sit and stew in my head for a while before it begins to sound like a truly good idea.

When I was a kid, canning was a big time affair. My mom, my grandmother and my aunt would come over and we'd sit around the table snipping the ends off green beans or blanching tomatoes and sliding them out of their skins. They made jams and jellies, as well. Whatever the harvest was for the moment, we'd wash or pit or juice or do whatever was required to save some of of that colorful goodness for winter.

Unfortunately, that's not exactly the way I looked at it when I was a kid. Canning often meant mornings or afternoons tied to the kitchen, the boiling water heating the already warm air. We had a water window cooler in those days, so the humidity, in my mind, was unbearable. There was always a box fan going and often a television playing "the soaps." When the pressure cooker was in use, there was the added music of that little weight bouncing on the steam. I can close my eyes and hear it all... the jingle of the pressure cooker, often pulling me from sleep in the morning to find the kitchen already a hive of activity. I can hear the sound of my grandmother's voice as she greeted me a good morning, and the sound of the back door thwacking shut as my father brought in more harvest to be put away from the garden.

Early in the year I had planned to report dutifully on the CSA deliveries and our wonderful Farmers' Market... among other things. At least a dozen weeks in a row, I have vowed to do a little more substantive blogging. I guess the buzz and activity of my own hive these days is keeping me well distracted.

Life is good.

Life is full of rainbows.