Filling and emptying containers

How to start this post.

Every year when I am at the lake, I try to find ways to contribute to the work of maintaining Doral and Anita's home on lot three and moving things out of the house that were Arta's. I think of it both as a responsibility and as a gift.

Last year I noticed that in the basement freezer room there are a lot of old jars of preserves, or home canned goods.I can remember looking to see if there was any raspberry jam or canned peaches. These are some of my favourite things in the world. Nope. Just some sort of plum preserve that was now black. I walked away.

This year I decided I could be the person to dispose of these jars. So the job was emptying the jars, finding a place to dispose of the organic material, cleaning and sorting the jars, and finally finding a new home for the jars -- for a future canning project.

As I gathered the jars, I laughed at what was left. Particularly this jar.

From past conversations with Arta, I know these were her two least favourite fruits. I don't have a lot of memories from growing up of having either saskatoons or rubarb around our house. And so as an adult, to me there were special and delicious. One summer I bought a strawberry rhubarb pie and some saskatoon jam at DeMills. When I got back to the house with them Arta looked at what I had bought with incredulity.  "Why would you pay for that?" she said. She then told me that she had eaten so much of those when she was young because those were things you could pick yourself. They were associated with being poor, and so had a certain stigma in her mind. Similar to how on the east coast, if you brought lobster sandwiches to school for lunch, it was a sign your father was a fisherman and poor.

So I know Arta did not make this jam, and did not eat it, but she never would have turned down a gift of this jam from someone.  She would have known, and appreciated the work that goes into making and canning your own perserves.  And what a gift it would be to give that away to someone you care about.

The bulk of the jars were filled with plum preserves. Looking at the dates on the jar, I am guessing they came from Moiya's plum tree that had to be taken down a few years ago. Pictured below are 3 jars. There were far more than 3 jars.

I also came across a box that had several jars labelled as apple butter. Those were also at least a decade old and needed to be disposed of.  They were not longer a beautiful apple-saucy colour, but rather were black, black. My quick search of "how long can you keep preserves" come us with 2-5 years for home preserved goods.

So once I had all the jars emptied into several 4 litre buckets... where to dispose of it? Not into the septic system, so I ventured out into the woods, far from the cabins to a spot to dump it. 

Then I found some more boxes of various empty glass jars, so I sorted them into jars to be recycled and those that could be used for canning. During my sorting I came across a famliar jar ring that I have not seen in ages - the very thick one.  And the jar had a glass lid, as opposed to the metal ones. Vintage indeed.

I took a photo, then thought I should stage the photo better. Ironic that there was a bowl of plums sitting nearby.