Sweet corn appeared at our Farmer’s Market two weeks ago, and we carted it home by the sack- full to eat and to freeze. Though I couldn’t have verbalized it as I was growing up, it’s clear to me now that as a kid I longed to be somewhere safe. A place where a critical eye wasn’t constantly watching, and where, most of all, I could feel safe about what might come tomorrow and the day after that.

Somewhere deep in my memory, I remember my grandmother’s basement. It wasn’t, all things considered a very pleasant place—an unfinished, cobwebby place where the furnace and hot water heater creaked and clicked. But on the walls, in long lines on simple wooden shelves were endless rows of glass jars, filled with vegetables my grandmother had canned. She was Dutch-German and so never threw anything away, which meant that some of the jars had been there for years. It was difficult to identify what some of them contained, as if over time whatever it was had taken on a life of its own. But those were in the back, and Grandmother said not to worry, she’d get to them someday.

Often I was sent down to get one of those jars. Green beans or sweet corn put up the previous summer, and they never tasted like the bland stuff that could be bought in a grocery store. There was strawberry jam, slices of pears swimming in juice, and in the corner, a large vat where the huge cabbages she had raised in the garden slowly turned into sour kraut.

Ever since I have felt more secure with the coming of winter if we have food in the basement. Margie doesn’t put up things in canning jars anymore, except for freezer jam, but getting our freezer full each autumn is something that is deeply satisfying.

So we slipped the ears of sweet corn in boiling water (for 3 minutes), dropped them into the sink filled with cold water, then cut off the kernels and put them up in freezer bags. Today we drove to a nearby town to pick up the frozen meat of a hog we had purchased from one of the venders we’ve come to know at our Farmer’s Market. And later this fall the ½ beef and 2 turkeys we’ve purchased from another farmer will be ready. It’s been wonderful getting to know the people who raise our food.

And though I know that we live in a different time than my grandparents, watching the freezer fill up always makes me feel, well, as if we’re getting ready for winter. I know the reality of our lives and that the freezer only supplements what we get at the grocery, but that isn’t the point, at least to me. Feeling safe is a fragile gift, and not to be taken lightly.

And I tell you: if you haven’t tasted Margie’s sweet corn and strawberry freezer jam in the dead of winter, then well, sorry.