Canning season is in full swing.

I began the week with tomato jam (I use this recipe, minus the ginger because I rarely have that on hand) and I’ll be ending it with peaches. Our own peach trees don’t produce much of anything yet, so we get our peaches from a local farm. The trick, when canning, is to ask the farmer for ‘seconds’. This is the fruit deemed not quite pretty enough to sell, and it comes at a steep discount. A bit is lost as you trim unusable spots – you don’t want to can with anything you wouldn’t want to eat – but a great majority of the fruit is just fine.

Ordering seconds does mean I’m on the farmer’s, and nature’s, schedule. Rather than plan which day I’m going to can, I have to wait until I get the call that the fruit is ready and rearrange my days to fit the canning in. Any inconvenience is more than made up for in the middle of winter when I’m warmed by a jar of habanero peach preserves.