bottling

i blame the 60s.
while chairman mao was busy revolutionising culture, women worldwide were liberating themselves- burning bras (so the story goes) left and right. once emancipated from their womanly rolls of cooking and cleaning and catering to their families they were free to join workforces and earn money as freely as their fellow men. mao, seeing the rise in potential capital from the two salary families took advantage of our newfound equality to turn us from creators into consumers.
thus ends the very short 'modern history of everything' lesson from me.
actually, it is relevant.
i've just last night finished my second lesson in a two part series of bottling and preserving classes. the lessons were run by a man. an englishman with a welsh name. the class was filled with middle aged ladies (who, amongst other things, quite probably were regretting buring their bras). the teacher, rhys, also ran classes on sustainability and although this subject would logically be a part of those lessons it was not.
so my grey haired team and i chopped and measured. we poured and boiled, sterilised and gossipped and, whilst supervised, were taught how to preserve food grown in our gardens (or those of our neighbours) to give to our families in the colder months.

me, capitalising on the generosity of my neighbour and her heavily laden peach tree, and my love of pickles, i created some (spicy) peach chutney.

so what did i really learn? of course, i learnt the importance of sterilising my bottles. i learnt how to avoid buring myself while doing this. i learnt the names and faces of a few people who live within my city (but not within my community); we also exchanged recipes (but not phone numbers). however, within my community, i have made the classic gardener's exchange- an excess in peaches for a jar of chutney.
these lessons that in the 50s would have been given to us by our mothers, in the home. in our eagerness to be equal we forgot something. we were busy learning new skills previously only known to men.
since calix was born i've traipsed all over the city searching the information and the skills to use within the new home i was creating, how to sew, how to knit, how to bottle and preserve. hopefully he'll be interested and i'll be able to teach him, at home. in the spirit of new feminism i'll teach my son how to be a home-maker.

xx
mama b