As a child, I always knew that the lazy days of summer were fading and that fall was upon us when my Grandma Mitzi and Gramps canned tomato juice.  It was always a team effort — he would crank the tomatoes through the “Squeezo” machine, which was tightly viced to the kitchen table, extracting tomato seeds and skins, and juice would slowly drip into a bowl. She would man the boiling, bubbling juice on the stove, waiting until the last bit of foam was gone before pouring it into mason canning jars. I always hated the smell, and I never, ever wanted to touch the squishy fruits. Gramps is gone now, and my dad has taken over gardening, and subsequently, canning duties. Last year, the tomato blight killed many of the crops, resulting in a “meager” 76 quarts — Grandma keeps track of the yearly bounty. In 2008, she and my dad canned 105 quarts.

This was my first year helping out — partly for research for this piece, and partly because I need that canned juice to replicate her spaghetti sauce (sorry, you can’t have the recipe). And my fiancé, Jimmy, loves to drink some of the jars of juice that have been spiked with hot peppers.

We start cutting the tomatoes in halves or quarters, depending on their size. G-Ma, as I like to call her, has me holding the tomatoes in my hand, slicing them without a cutting board. I promptly slice my finger, too. Lesson number one: always use a cutting board, even if your otherwise wise grandma has some sort of odd aversion to them.

Squeezo machines now have motors rigged to them, so the labor intensive cranking has been taken out of the equation. My dad takes the sliced tomatoes and pops them into the machine, scraping the seeds and pulp off of the strainer and into a waste bowl — which he puts back into the machine to extract as much juice as possible.

We fill two large pots — more than eight quarts capacity each —add a few palmfuls of salt, and turn the stove on high. There’s one more smaller pot ready to go that I want to put on the stove as well, but my dad warns me that two boiling pots at one time is going to be more than enough for me to man. He was right.

G-Ma and I are talking when all of the sudden she lets out a loud yell — one of the pots had come to a boil so quickly that it was almost boiling over. We take large wooden spoons and stir the juice, working the foamy top so that we don’t have a splattery mess to clean up on the stove when we are finished.

Once the juice comes to a boil, we cook it until all of the foam on top is gone —this step is necessary to avoid having a layer of water on top of the juice in the mason jars. This takes at least an hour, sometimes more. Patience, and constant stirring, pays off. I take the sterilized mason jars, one at a time, and hold them over the boiling juice so that the steam can fill them and heat them just enough so that they don’t crack when I funnel in the hot juice.

When the jar is filled almost to the top, I wipe the rim off. To ensure a tight seal, nothing can be left on the rim of the jar — not even a drop of juice. The lids have been simmering on low in a pot of water; the rubber on the lids must be heated a little so that they seal tightly. With a pair of tongs, I pull one out and place it on the top of the jar. Then, with an Ove-Glove on my left hand, I hold the jar of juice as I twist the ring on.

We place the quarts of hot juice under a towel on the kitchen counter, to keep them warm as long as possible. This, too, ensures a tight seal, which is the bottom line when it comes to canning. If any air is allowed into the jar so is bacteria, effectively ruining the juice.  That day, we can around 20 quarts of juice in three pots and about as many hours. We know the process is complete when we start to hear pops — the jars are sealed! The next week, canning hot (spicy) juice is on the agenda.

I want to take a few jars as I leave, and G-Ma directs me down to the fruit cellar, because we have to use up the previous year’s bounty before cracking into the new jars. But every time I take a jar or two, no matter what, Grandma reminds us, “Bring those jars back! I need them for next year!”