by Katharyn Privett
“It’s vintage,” my son assured me as I turned the Mason jar in the morning light. “Limited edition,” I countered. My birthday present was a Strong Shoulder, crafted of dappled glass in a rose hue, a nod to productions from the 1920s-1930s. Certainly, this run created a formidable replica. Its pigment was infused purposefully, rather than resulting from chemical reactions between manganese in the glass and exposure to ultraviolet light. Whatever the process, each offering was collectible in nature and had become a tradition between my eldest and myself. They glistened in cobalt and green, violet and amber along a kitchen shelf, too precious to be accosted by the steam of a canner. Tokens of love, I would remind myself as a new jar jostled its predecessors aside every April. And that, they surely were.
We took the requisite photo that morning, staged in clusters of dandelions and yarrow, and then my gift joined the others. It was, we both agreed, the prettiest one yet.
And although I knew the worth of a good Mason jar, I elected to ignore its intended purpose throughout pear season. It gathered dust as I emptied out pints of jams that had become questionable in nature, twinkling at me over sticky ladles as I worked. Still, I held firm, making my way through the plain and ordinary lot at hand until their number was no longer negotiable. Surely, I shouldn’t sully that jar, I pronounced to an empty kitchen one laborious afternoon. Jalapeños simmered merrily in front of me, the aroma of mustard seed and garlic rising in bursts against the air. But this is special, I whispered to the pot. Cowboy candy is a beloved favorite in my family, the harborer of heat and spice against the gloom of winter, still months away. Yet here, there were suddenly no more jars to salvage, and there my prized collection winked at me from the shelf. They had a job to do, it turns out, as all the others had done before them. In the end, it was quite the unceremonious moment.
Something shifted within me and knocked a memory loose, regardless.
As those jars lost their visible color, now full of peppers and possibility, I remembered my gran standing against a Formica counter in 1978. I could see her there, still smelling of dish soap and somehow already sewing herself into the fabric of the lowering sunlight. (Some memories know themselves well before we do.) She was dusting an Atlas Mason jar of peaches, a remnant of a past harvest when her hair was chestnut and life could still be a mystery. “I meant to open it,” she whispered in an almost apology, “I put it aside for a special day.” It had become an artifact of a summer untasted, memorialized in apple cider vinegar born of long-dead trees. And I hated that jar, that relic that she couldn’t throw away, couldn’t open, and couldn’t weigh against time. While I didn’t understand then, I now fully comprehend the ache that comes from preserving a treasure that never lands upon the shore.
When she passed away, my inheritance consisted of only three items: a recipe book, a table lamp, and that damnable jar of peaches. My gran never missed an opportunity to have the last word on a subject. I scooted it to the back of the larder to loom ominously over the more worthy goods. In time, it became an anchor for cobwebs, still and quiet in an otherwise bustling cupboard.
Upon occasion, the urge to dust it tempts my hand. But then again, I’m rather fond of having the last word, myself.
It’s now the end of harvest, this one brutal and well earned. My work is over, arrested motionless in jars: the air, the rain, my aching feet as I balanced from left to right over cutting boards and boiling water. June is lined up in the back, afternoons suspended in blueberries and mosquito bites, tiny orbs plucked one by tedious one. July is formidable, standing at attention as green beans, cucumbers and whole tomatoes, the lions of my pantry. August is snuggled in last, with its boisterous figs canned in port wine, a promise for a Christmas table not yet here. It’s comforting, this “store” (as gran called it) put up to sustain a life not yet fully weighed.
It occurs to me, as I consider my panacea for the boniness of frozen gardens, how forgotten these jars could become. How redundant, how useless would they be—prattling on about a season in the sun against their seals—if the need for them didn’t arise? But I already know the answer, in the way that we know things when the past slides against our hands and weaves itself into the present. My fingers trace the words etched across the jars: Mason, Kerr, Ball. These were the special days, preserved and pickled as they were, to come. They had manifested themselves with every jiggle of a weight, every tediously wiped rim.
And here they wait.
Some jars are harder to open than others, I’ve found. These carry the afternoons before heartaches and losses, unknown to the fruit within them, and the sting of a blissfully unaware morning can slip beneath the pop of a lid without permission. Even then, there’s medicine waiting there, lessons of the lives I’ve led along the way. If you listen very closely, the ghosts of soil and hay, sunsets and trowels will whisper stories of their capture in glass. And there, even there in that inconvenient release of lopsided haints, pieces of me are stitched together again in cobblers and stews. It’s a bit of a time travel, quantum leaps against the mundane and the extraordinary, a dance that demands an ovation well after the audience has left the building. Of course, I know, it’s just the art of canning. Perhaps only specters of that alchemy remain, their voices barely audible over the tick of a clock.
No matter. I’ve always loved a haunted house.
And so, I will continue to put things by. It doesn’t escape me that there must be a curtain call, an epilogue of sorts that could contextualize the whole of a harvest. Funny, I think, how little its seeds weighed in the beginning, how likely they were to blow away. I wonder if it mattered, those prayers I sung alongside Van Morrison, reminding the farm that these were, indeed, the days that just might last forever. I’m braver there in yesterday, as I will be again when frost gives way to spring. That has to be good enough, I tell my grandma, as she retreats back to her place on the shelf. I close the cabinet behind me, and in the shadows that remain, the house spider turns back to her work. Some stories never end, I suppose, until they are anchored to the present.
But I’m still writing, Gran. Don’t worry. I’m taking you with me.
Oh, and my son did eventually ask after the jar, now missing from its balcony, its abscondence marked only by a circle of clean white paint. I gestured to the shelf and watched as his fingers pressed against the bubbled glass, remembering it by its shape. Good, then, he said, wiping a hint of dust from the lid. It should be special. We shall see. With any luck, the jar will be opened, and its ghosts will begin to speak of other sunrises and storms that gathered in glass before the dimming of the day. All of their secrets will break free, whether they be that of farmers or Fae, and spin into a moment that has almost forgotten the lyrics of the song. The hum of living, jumbled and wild, will mend itself into the present, unhindered by the chatter of its audience. It will all happen in a fraction of a second, almost inaudible as the spoon clinks against the rim, lifting syrupy peppers into the light. And then, we shall assuredly see.
After all, it’s just a matter of time.
photo credit: Jay Heike, UnsplashKatharyn Privett, PhD, is an English professor, writer, and farmer in rural Alabama. Her grandmother was integral in her upraising, and therefore had an impact on her understanding of working with plants and the earth. As an organic, biointensive micro-farmer focused on sustainability, Katharyn continues to reach out to her neighbors in an effort to teach them to grow their own food with minimal impact to their financial resources or the environment. From seed to harvest, she also works to echo her Cherokee roots in an ethical and holistic communion with the land. Katharyn is a Master Gardener and also the creator of the Southern Fried Witch podcast. Her book, Farmcracft: An Ecology of Witchfolk is forthcoming in 2026.