Cold Climate Gardening

Tomatoes the Old-Fashioned Way
I’ve been reading the The Little House on the Prairie series to my six-year-old at bedtime. We just happen to be on The Long Winter and were reading “Fall of the Year” just a couple of days ago, where the Ingalls were surprised by an early hard frost. Ma and Laura picked all the ripe tomatoes from the blackened vines and made “almost a gallon of preserves.” I wondered if this was just an old way of saying canned tomatoes, but later on it is referred to as sweet preserves by Mary. So did they have tomato jam on toast for breakfast? Does anyone know how people used tomatoes in the 1870s-1880s? Or canning and preserving practices in general back then?

Ma then goes on to make green tomato pickle. People still do this today; Frugal Upstate has a recipe for Fireballs–try them if you dare.

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This essay was written before 2001, and a lot has changed since then. Details in the Postscript.

People tend to assume, since I live in the country and have a large family, that I grow and preserve all (or at least a good deal) of the food we eat. But the truth is, I really don’t like to put food up, and I’m glad I don’t have to do it. Canning is hot, steamy work needing to be done (usually) at the hottest, most humid …

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