Pass it along

I've been trying lately to think of something to write about that would be interesting and useful.  Most of my thoughts come from day to day living and are not actually earth shaking revelations. And sadly I am not a writer of the caliber of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) who could make going after the cows in the afternoon sound like the adventure of a lifetime.  Nor am I really up to the level of Louise Dickinson Rich (We Took to the Woods - and if you haven't read it, you should!) who wrote of living on the Carry Road up north on the Maine/New Hampshire border many years ago. By the way, you can actually stay overnight in either her winter or summer house on the Carry Road and one of my ambitions is to actually find them.  Have tried a couple times and ended up on the wrong side of the Richardson Lakes and Umbagog Lake.  A clear case of "you can't get there from here".

Now back to more or less my point:

I am somewhat older than a lot of my friends and they all enjoy my pickles, jams and other homemade items. A few of my contemporaries do preserve and can but even in my age group not that many of them do.  When we get together you hear a lot of "my mother used to do that but I never learned how" or "it seemed like too much trouble so I just never did it".   Been thinking lately that probably I am one of the last of the people in my group who knows how to do some of the things I do....

So with all that in mind lately I've started passing along the recipes for some of the things I make - now any fool can look on the Internet and find a recipe for, say, zucchini relish.  Ah, but is it THE recipe that Betsi had?  How would they know unless they had a copy of MY recipe!  And certainly nowhere out there is my "combo zucchini and jalapeno" recipe.

A while ago I even had some friends over to help make strawberry jam - and since then I know at least one person has been making her own.

The thing is, once a person find out how easy it is to make, say, jam - they are off and running for any other kind of jam or jelly.  All they needed was a little information and a push.

The same thing goes for canning almost anything that doesn't require pressure canning:  it takes the same equipment and, basically, the same process - all you need is the recipe.  So once a person has the right materials, canning loses it's mystery.

Some basic equipment as above and a few canning jars:

Some are plain and utilitarian:

Others are a bit fancier:

There are others that are even more old style:

And all of them make awesome gifts when filled with homemade contents:

So now to my long awaited point:

If you have skills, no matter how simple or unimportant you think they are, pass them along!  Find someone who would love to do what you do or someone who may need to do what you do and get them started.  Then in the far from now time they will be the ones passing these skills along to the next generation rather than the ones wishing they could remember how you did it!

Come on - you got this!