To Molly, June seemed to be as good if not better than any of the Amish food preservers she’d met. She had, infrequently, done some canning with June, mostly vegetables from their garden such as tomatoes, green beans, shelly beans, corn, beets, and pickles.
However, once they completed renovating their lake home, she began to get more serious about it, and every year thereafter, she and June preserved hundreds and hundreds of jars of vegetables, fruits, tomato juice, apple butter, apple sauce, jams and jellies, mostly during three month periods from mid-August through mid-November. Although Molly became quite skilled at it, and had acquired all the necessary cookers, pots, pans, Mason jars, rubber gaskets, lids, jelly jars and sealing paraffin wax, she always canned with June - either in her kitchen or in June's. In fact, Frank built his wife an annex to their kitchen specifically for canning, which, when completed, they used almost exclusively for their joint canning projects.
As they continued to increase the fertility of the garden and orchard, they became increasingly productive - especially when the fruit trees grew to maturity. Eventually it reached the point where they simply could not eat or can all of it, so they then had the great pleasure of giving large proportions of the fruits and vegetables, and even canned goods, to their many relatives, friends and neighbors. Charlie and Molly had always been generous with the fruits of their farm, but now they had to actively encourage people to accept a substantial part of their harvests, to keep the excesses from rotting in the field. Fortunately, there was enough hauled away by grateful recipients that nothing produced on the farm ever went to waste.
Charlie discussed all of this with his Amish friends, and discovered that they regularly used services provided by the USDA and county agricultural agents, even though the agencies viewed Amish agricultural practices as nineteenth century and archaic. The Amish weren’t bothered about the views of outside communities, preferring to build from within with a constant drive among farmers, blacksmiths and craftsmen to improve their way of life by incorporating new ideas. Charlie and Molly adored that way of life, and became quite expert in Amish ways, Charlie working with the carpenters and Molly noodle-making and baking in the kitchens at the barn raisings they attended.
Then at their thirtieth wedding anniversary, over at the lake, Charlie surprised Molly with a horse, a beautiful black mare (which Molly named Black Beauty) to pull along the buggy which they borrowed from their old friend Aaron from time to time. They dearly loved to take buggy rides behind the fast-paced trotting of Black Beauty, through the peaceful Amish rural landscape, and to visit the many quaint small towns scattered about the beautiful countryside…
‘Hang on there a moment,’ I said, leaning forward to distract Luther from his fascinating tale.
We had sat by the lake, and then in my little square cabin, for the best part of nine hours as he’d related the histories of the people in the cabin next door, the ones he called his great aunt and uncle. I had seen them return to their grand lake house, laughing, flushed by the wind as they’d driven along in their open-air buggy. Luther had popped across to tell them where he was, and they’d waved to me briefly before heading into the house. Minutes later I’d heard the unmistakeable sound of logs being split as Charlie – or perhaps Molly – prepared the open fire for the evening.
It had grown dark without me noticing, so I took advantage of the break I’d created in the conversation to jump up and turn on the light. It glared uncompromisingly on the lids of the four beer bottles we’d managed to sink between us. It had been a long day, mind you, and we’d punctuated it with little meals from Luther’s backpack, stocked as it was with all varieties of snacks and goodies. Now I’d heard all about their growing and canning activities, I could guess where it was all from.
Luther smiled at me patiently. ‘You have a question?’
‘Questions, more like.’ I counted them out on my fingers. ‘So that couple next door, Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn.’ I could see Luther didn’t understand the Golden Pond reference, so I powered on. ‘They’re seventy years old?’
‘A little more, I think,’ replied Luther.
‘And they’ve been married for thirty odd years. And a bit more. But he was a bank robber who served time for two whole decades from the age of fifteen, and she was married to a gay sheriff who clearly died of Aids, followed by an impotent confirmed bachelor who contributed to both their divorces. Is that right?’
Luther frowned. ‘Well, he was only the driver at the bank robbery,’ he said carefully, as if to an idiot. His expression was along the lines of: ‘That was a fundamental point. How much more have you missed?’
‘And they were adopted into a large Amish community and, therefore have a massive family of people, none of whom are actually related to them?’