The smell of harvest

Photo courtesy of hub's cousin, Dave

It’s official. We are definitely in the harvest season, canuckland-style. Back home, there would still be a good couple weeks until it was ‘go time, get your head in the game, put your game face on,’ whichever you prefer.

Normally, the smell of harvest is that crisp nip of the air to your cheeks bringing the light scents of drying leaves, clean air and a hint of dew to your nose. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of those people that perpetually have a coffee mug of a sort in your hand or nearby; then it might be a little harder to pick up that specific, memory-maker scent. Let’s be real here, that heady smell of delicious, brain-jumpstarting coffee wins the race of scents recognized by the ol’ nose. Also, unless you’re one of those rare, yet-to-be-photographed tea drinkers then you might have a bit more of a chance catching a nice, long inhale of that harvest-time scent. And for those on the struggle bus, imagine pumpkins, pumpkin spice (or chai tea) lattes and cinnamon apple crisp then you’d be on the right track (but behind, clearly).

Photo courtesy of hub's cousin, Dave

 However, seeing as how it’s still August that lovely harvest scent has not been on the market for outdoor scents, yet, it’s coming but will probably make an appearance closer to October. Right now, the smell of harvest is dust, brittle and hot wind and more itchy dust. Spring wheat is apparently quite notorious for leaving behind some love for its land stewards in the form of itchy dust. I’m thinking the correlation between the itchy dust and wheat is due to the stalk size of the plant. I’ve noticed bean dust is itchy but wheat dust takes it to another level. No thank you! I’ll take the rock trap opening and dumping a nice load of bean dust and junk on me than get covered in wheat dust.

Spring wheat harvest is cruising along, especially with the rain passing by. However, the yields give us much to be thankful for as the rain totals have been on the sparse side. I wake hubs early in the mornings to go swathing canola to take advantage of the dew. As I understand it, the dew makes for better swath cutting and less shelling out of the canola. Hopefully the canola yields well also. 

Photo courtesy of my hubs

 Did I mention it was dusty? Beautiful, rain-laden clouds pass over and give some much-needed shade while I’m mowing but they continue on and keep dumping rain over the same prairies south of us. Maybe the rain clouds need a perfect proposal kind of skit to entice them to grace us with some rain. You know that scene, where the future fiancée is flown over a beach/field/etc and there’s a proposal written out below. Ah well, there’s always hope of rain in the forecast although the clouds will tell when it will actually rain.

While hubs is having so much fun with a few breakdowns here and there and rolling in the itchy dust like it was a leaf pile meets a five year-old, I’ve been harvesting the garden. Never have I felt like a championing victor than when I ended up picking a bucket of cucumbers. Perhaps it was the summer long ordeal of a war campaign against the grass. Or perhaps it was the thought of a lighter grocery bill. Of course I knew exactly what I was going to do with this abundance of veggies (and my plan when I planted). Canning!

Let me first clarify that this was the launch of my canning career. I’ve assisted my mom growing up but I dried the jars or stuffed them with the veggie of the day. This was a whole new level of the game. What do you do first? For how long? And more questions. Naturally, I went to Pintrest; the site that’s a treasure-trove of ideas and knowledge. Then I called my mom. Hashtag ‘thanks mom’ was so appropriate for my Insta post later. I sweated out over three and a half hours of canning. One batch turned into two. Hubs popped in for a kiss and drink of water and then said he was scouting the garden before he left with the truck. I thought for sure he wouldn’t find anything, I had just been out there yesterday picking. Yeah…  He comes in with an armload of cucumbers. Hence batch number two. 

I survived my first attempt at canning, it was surprisingly easier than I had thought. For even better first-timer experience, I had a jar break on me in the canner bath. I’ll blame it on the heat in the kitchen as to why I stood there stupefied for a good, long couple of seconds as I watched bits of dill float to the surface. Then the water turned a bit yellow (dill mix) and then it finally hit me that a seal had broken or something. Now which jar was it? Some serious scrutiny later I found the culprit. I set the offending jar in the sink, placed in the last jar and closed the lid. Peering at the ‘broken’ jar (it was boiling hot yet) I couldn’t figure it out and then I turned the jar around so I could see the bottom. And there it was. Ah ha. My mom commented later that she couldn’t believe that had happened on my first time canning because she’s only had that happen to her a couple of times in all her years of canning experience.

Here’s to a new week (my parents’ anniversary today!), harvest and productive gardens. May your seat be comfy, the radio loud and harvest yields great.