What significance is a can of peaches?

I truly believe that behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. The families and individuals who make their corner shops successful across the country though thoughtful love and care for the work that they do. To shop at local business is to learn how other people live and eat and cook - I learn from them wherever I go and the inspiration from their stories and supporting their livelihood makes me hungry to learn more and to be better.

One such story goes like this, "Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life."

This story reminded me that the life we live is significant and we have the capacity to choose what we do, how we do it, what our feelings are, and what qualities and values make up our character. We choose how our money is spent (and what values will be reinforced in the future based on who we give money is given to) to get the items, like canning jars, we have needed and desired throughout time. The purchase of canning supplies to fuel the livelihood of families is a lovely example of how products are good and have been needed and perceived throughout history. Check these pressure canning government posters out from World War two:

Sure, how we get and enjoy our food has significantly changed since world war two. It's a mark of human culture to change throughout time but it's not only the things around us that are changing - our perceptions and attitudes too change throughout time and contribute to the culture of today.

My attitude was certainty different from my Grandma's but she taught me how delicious canned peaches from a backyard peach tree are. (aren't they beautiful?)

Her attitude and values taught be to appreciate eating peaches in the winter. You caned the peach and there exists a valuable connection between you, the peach, the peach-tree, the land, the sun, and the seasons that makes peaches ripen. My time spent growing up on my grandma's farm made me learn the value canning, that is, being a part of that time and place, in concert with the season and the earth, of one of the oldest agriculture practices.

To have a can of peaches was to preserve in a glass jar the memory of a summer day to be remembered in savory-peach-ripeness in the cold days of winter. 

We, as individuals, though our free will choices can contribute collectively to the state of the globe that will set the foundation for the future changes to come.

This business blog photo below catches my drift.

It's up to you. It's up to me. It is within the choices and attitudes of every citizen on the planet that the future of what values are important in our culture will depend on. 

Cue Charles Swindoll -