Beautiful Rhubarb

   

     It's been over a month since I've written a word beyond FaceBook comments.  I admit I succumbed to a favourite past-time, reading, in between energetic bouts of gardening.  A site called bookbub.com has aided and abetted this inclination by offering, on a daily basis, free or very inexpensive e-books and I have been taking advantage. The driest spring and early summer I can remember has added additional work to my gardening, necessitating watering, something we, in the past, rarely had to do. This year, had we not watered, much of our garden would still reside as non-germinated seeds in the ground.  Our well is not sufficient to accomplish this task, but we have a wee lake (pond, slough, beaver dam, water hole) on our farm so we drop in a pump and move a sprinkler wherever it's needed - mainly the vegetable garden. The berry garden has deep roots, and the lawn, well we watered it some but it's suffering. Crops in the area look poor. The canola fields especially are very spotty, many farmers are already calculating severe losses. Hay crops are doing better, perfect weather for haying, but yields are far less than usual. Cereal crops, not dependant on the length of the stem, have a better chance should the rain ever come. But there's one high yielder that seems to survive and thrive through almost any conditions thrown at it - rhubarb.

     Yes, rhubarb, beautiful rhubarb. I know a few people who actually like it so much they'll chew on a stalk, but I'm of the variety that requires additional sweetness to enjoy this prolific plant's bounty.  I have recipes galore for rhubarb based goodies - cakes, crisps, jams, preserves, wine - but my favourite is juice, and that's how I make the greatest use of the two plants I have in my berry garden. I pick, chop, wash, steam out the juice, add sugar (1 cup per litre) and heat, put in clean jars and process in a pressure canner for 5 minutes at 5 pounds.  The result is a concentrate to which I add water to taste when I pull a jar out of the cellar as the seasons roll by. Then, just in time, when the juice is gone, the rhubarb plant emerges from the ground, an early harbinger of spring, and grows so fast I'm always surprised it's ready to use once again.