Summers were always the best time of year for me when I was growing up, except for Saturdays, when my mother would raise the dead with her "Wake-up" voice and we would all have to go out to the garden in the early morning, before the dew was off the grass, and pull weeds. We would all work for a few hours and then she would let us off the chain gang for some summer family fun. What I hated worse then the early morning wakeup calls on summer Saturdays, were the Fall after-school and weekends when canning took over our lives.

The house would fill with the smells of Jams or Jellies, Pickles, Pears, Peaches, Grape Juice, Tomatoes, Apple Sauce, Apple Pie Filling, Green Beans and Corn. For weeks, when I got home from school and could smell the humidity in the air from the canner or the pressure cooker, I would try desperately to sneak out the back door and enjoy some freedom with the horses, but my mother always seemed to find me, like a heat-seeking missal launched out of spite, and I would be escorted back into the canning kitchen to help with our winter food storage.