My kitchen looks like the scene of a violent, delicious crime.
Knives dot the countertops that are streaked with red tomato juice. Chaos
reigns. The soft swish of the dishwasher thrums underneath the clank of spoons
on metal and glass, but its valiant effort to keep up with me is doomed. Dishes pile up. Plump
red tomatoes plop into a pot of boiling water, their skins cracking under the
heat. Onion fumes assault my nose, but I press onward and coarsely chop green
peppers and celery. When the tomatoes are ready, I slip them from their skins
and their acid clings to my hands like a spa-grade chemical peel.
This, more than anything, tells me summer is over. The
bright, cleansing smell of raw vegetables and the pruning of my fingers, the
way the tomato juice finds every wound I’ve inflicted on myself wielding hammers
and tin snips, insinuating itself into my skin, into me.
---
I’ve never made my own stewed tomatoes, only helped my
mother, the woman who deftly conducts each kitchen utensil until the heap of
raw materials has been neatly laid to waste and in its place stands an army of
matching Mason jars filled with muted reds and greens. Even producing immense
quantities of canned goods, she never makes as big a mess as I do.
Tonight, I looked over the box of tomatoes and onions she
and my father picked for me and decided I’d better get going before they
rotted. Some things came back easily – the big pot of boiling water, the
slotted spoon to drop the red orbs in and pick them out, the celery and peppers
and onion. But I had no idea how much of anything. I of course called my
mother. She walked me through the first few steps, and I could see her in her
own kitchen helping me help her for the very first time. One thing you never
forget if you’ve made stewed tomatoes is to cover the chopped onions with tomatoes
lickety split. If you don’t, you’ll pay for it with tears. This I always
remember.
---
I finished with four quarts of stewed tomatoes and two pints
of fresh salsa. No canning tonight, since I don’t have a canner or anything big
enough for a boiling water bath, but I’ll make quick work of it all and freeze
what’s left. I do so love to eat.
Other signs of fall arrive daily since our return from vacation in the wilds of Canada and Michigan. Our neighbor kid drained
his pool, letting its sad trickle run down the curb and into the storm sewer.
Jackson’s kids had to be back in school halfway through August, so there wasn’t
any point.
I saw just one firefly skittering around in the
bushes near evening. In the heat of summer, they’ll rise with the dusk, like the earth
releasing its heat. They bumble around and twinkle in all the corn and bean
fields so the crops look like a fairytale. But now they’re gone, only to return
with warmer days.
And just today I passed a row of grain semis lined up three
deep at the elevator. Our soybeans are turning yellow, and the corn is
following suit. Soon there’ll be a constant smell of dried, crushed plants as
combines and grain carts come out in force to finish off the fields.
Harvest is different to me since I married a farmer. It used
to be the sadness of hollow fields and knowing another transition had left
behind a summer full of things that could never be retrieved. Now its more like
a call to arms – ready the men and the machines, and no stopping until each acre is clean.
Through rain, breakdowns, sun-dappled evenings and long, long nights they’ll
keep going until the kernels and beans are all stored away. Women, too, and
little ones dressed up like miniature farmers who supervise the rest of us from
buddy seats and red wagons.
Godspeed and a good harvest, we pray. May the chilling
September breezes sing you to sleep, tucked tight under warm covers and
dreaming of fresh stewed tomatoes.
