“They will be yours for food”

Genesis 1:29   Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.   They will be yours for food.”

Preserving Fruit.

            My Dad had planted and cultivated a big orchard where we grew a lot of fruit.   There were peaches, the early peaches and ones that ripened around Christmas time, and then there were the late ones, the clingstones, so perfect for canning.   There were peaches with white flesh and the ones with yellow flesh.   Apricots were all very much the same but there were different types of plums.   He grew figs where they could be irrigated and had a number of varieties as well as the Adam fig with its big leaves and nice juicy fruit.   There were pomegranates with blood red pips that could stain your clothes.   He grew gooseberries and many other types of fruit which I cannot remember now.

            We had to wait for the fruit to ripen before we ate any as green fruit could give children belly ache and make them quite sick.   Around the farm house my dad grew grapes, big black ones, little red ones, hanepoot and our favourite, beautiful Crystal grapes.   He tried a citrus tree here and there, but I cannot remember whether he had any success with them or not.   He was very good at what he did and was able to graft new shoots onto old root stock.

            My mother had many canned fruit bottles and by now they were empty and waiting to be loaded.   The best canning peaches were the ‘Albertha” and the ‘Kakamas’, beautiful and perfect yellow clingstones.   The fruit had to be cut and twisted open, exposing the pip which was removed with a teaspoon.   The peach halves were peeled and kept in some salt water until you had enough to pop into the pot of boiling sugar syrup.   They would then be placed carefully in the bottles whilst still boiling hot and covered with the hot syrup.   A housewife wanted her fruit to be perfectly displayed in the bottle as they would stand in rows on the pantry shelves.   Other fruit would be canned in a similar fashion and I can remember her canning grapes one year.

            If there was still fruit left when she had finished canning and making jam, she cut and peeled the fruit if so desired, preparing it for drying.   She would spread it on a netting wire frame and place it outside in the sunlight for four to five days in a row.   During the day the fruit would have to be covered with a net cloth to prevent birds from picking at it, and at night the fruit would have to be brought inside to avoid dew build up.   The drying fruit would have to be turned over twice during the process.   This meant that somebody had to stay at home throughout the drying period to chase off domestic animals and to remove the produce when the weather became too windy and dusty, or when it rained.   Then there was the fruit that would be minced and treated and placed on boards or in pans and dried as parchment and known in Afrikaans as ‘Smeer”.

  

          As far as I can remember all this was done during late summer and, with God’s blessings of an abundant harvest and nice weather, your pantry would be filled to the brim.   (Thank you Mommy)

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