Best of summer: PICKLES!

There’s nothing quite like the garden-fresh vegetables of summer! The crunch of home-grown produce, straight off the vine? Nothing compares! I spent many summers weeding and eating in my family’s numerous gardens. My grandparents on both sides of my family put in large gardens, and my dad’s father always carried a pocketknife and a small shaker of salt in the pocket of his ever-present overalls. He would unearth a potato, rutabaga, or carrot, shake off most of the dirt, then offer me a slice. This was my first introduction to many veggies – particularly less common varieties like kohlrabi.

My paternal grandparents grew a lot of root vegetables to sustain them throughout the fall and winter. They “put up” home-grown ingredients for stews, soups, pies, and casseroles. My maternal grandmother always put in a fairly large garden as well. Tender green beans were her favorite, and she always had a variety of lettuces and slicing tomatoes for salads, but other than flowers, the main focus of her garden was PICKLES! She canned dozens of jars of pickles every year and there were always rows of garlic, a couple of varieties of onion, bright green dill blossoms standing proudly in back, and pickles growing up along the fence.

Yes, she called them “pickles” because the firm-fleshed pickling cucumbers that she grew every year were different than other varieties. These “pickles” were designed to grow no longer than five or six inches, and to hold up to weather, bugs, and months soaked in brine, sitting on the shelf of her canning closet.

More often than not, the “pickles” that I ate were not from a jar or a salad. I liked to snag one right off the fence, give it a rub between my hands to remove the tiny barbs, and start munching! No dressing, salt, or additional seasoning was needed – we drank from the garden hose and ate from the garden. That’s just how it was in those days.

My grandma didn’t live far from Lake Michigan, and I often spent a lot of time at her house during summer. This was especially true during my early teen years when I had a long-distance boyfriend that lived nearby. He would walk over to her house wearing swim trunks and carrying a blanket, pick me up, and together we would walk to the beach and spend the day sunning and swimming. I would often pack us drinks or snacks.

As is often the case with first loves, mine was very sweet and cute, but not the sharpest hoe in the garden shed. One day, we were passing grandma’s garden on the way to the lake, and I asked my sweetie if he wanted a “pickle” from the garden. He considered, then said yes. I used my proven technique to rub the spines off, then gave it to him. He took a bite, made a disgusted face, and spat out the bite, crying: “that’s not a pickle! That’s a CUCUMBER!” Well, suffice to say that it’s a wonder that we didn’t break up that very day because I laughed and expressed astonishment that he didn’t realize that cucumbers require a nice little bath with yummy stuff like onion, garlic, alum, salt, and dill in order to achieve “dill pickle” status.

After harvesting the ingredients, there’s some sort of wizardry involving sanitizing jars, chopping and brining, water baths, lids sealing, and rings being added to jars. Unfortunately, these are skills that were not passed down to me.

Thankfully, however, my brother and his partner have inherited the knowledge and the knack! Each year they come up with dozens of creative items to sell in their little farm stand. In addition to eggs, aprons, jams, jellies, salsas, and special items like pickled asparagus and candied jalapeños, they do a nice, firm, crunchy dill pickle that tastes a LOT like grandma’s.

To me, that’s the perfect taste of summer!

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Thank you for reading!

Credit to Eighth Ave Acres (Home of Dickens' Chickens) for the photos and inspiration! Find them "down the lane" on the way to Off Map Glamping!