Curtis Southern, 84, from Mineral Wells, Texas, makes jam and jellies and sells them at the Cowtown Farmers Market in Fort Worth.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Curtis Southern doesn't remember exactly when he started making preserves. He figures it was "50 or 60 years ago — a lot longer than I like to think about."

At 84, he hasn't stopped yet. Every Saturday morning in summer, you'll find him with his wife, Esta Mae, and probably a grandchild or two at the Cowtown Farmers' Market in Fort Worth, behind a table lined with neat rows of jars.

Blackberry jam and jelly. Apricot jelly. Wild grape jelly and wild plum jelly. Strawberry jam. Fig preserves. Pineapple jelly. Peach preserves. Jalapeno jelly. Pear preserves and pear honey. Every jar bears a neatly printed gold label reading "Southern's Original."

"Pear preserves!" exults one market visitor who stops to browse at the Southerns' stand on a recent Saturday. She cradles the jar in her hands and breaks into a delighted smile. "It's the first time I've found pear preserves in years! My mother used to make them, and I just love them."

Southern's first lessons in canning and preserving food came from his own mother; he grew up in a time when, "if you didn't can the stuff in the summertime, you didn't have anything good to eat that winter."Today, unscrewing the cap from a jar of Smucker's is as close to a hands-on encounter with preserves as most of us are likely to get. But Southern continues to preserve his heritage, cooking up batches of ripe fruit in big stainless-steel vats every week or so in summer.He works in the state-certified kitchen he outfitted inside his "jelly house," next to the family farmhouse."I've never had anyone working with me," he says. "I know what I want to do, and what I need to do.""And he doesn't help me in my kitchen, either," Esta Mae notes crisply.Curtis and Esta Mae, married almost 60 years, have been farming all their lives. Their grandparents were farmers; the 95 acres they have farmed for almost half a century in Palo Pinto County belonged to Esta Mae's grandparents.And, although Esta Mae has always cooked for their family, Curtis Southern has known his way around a kitchen from an early age. Learning from his mother, he showed an aptitude for cooking as a young boy. When his mother was weakened by rheumatoid arthritis, the task of cooking meals for an extended farm family fell to Curtis, then about 12.The training came in handy when he went into the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Depression era work-relief program for young men that was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. It was 1940; Southern was 19. He was assigned to a CCC camp in Colorado, where he cooked for 200 men. "They seemed to enjoy my cooking, too," he recalls.

Southern can hardly recall the first batch of preserves he ever made, but he's pretty sure it was peach.The Southerns and their children once grew peaches on their property — 38 acres of orchards, 2,800 trees, producing 18 varieties — along with plums and vegetable crops. In his earlier years on their farm, Curtis worked in town, coming home to tend his crops after shifts at the Texas Knitting Mill and then at Southern Airways.But by the early `80s, "the deer got so bad they put me out of the orchard business, and I started leasing out to deer hunters."Though nominally retired, Southern couldn't quite stop farming. He put in several hundred blackberry plants and planted vegetables — potatoes, squash, cherry tomatoes, 1015 onions (a type of sweet onion). The Southerns sell their berries and vegetables at the farmers market — they were among the original members of the North Central Texas Farmers' Market, which moved to the traffic circle and added the "Cowtown" moniker this year — but their main draw is Southern's Original jellies.

Some of their blackberries go into Southern's big stainless-steel pots, as do wild plums and mustang grapes that grow on their property. Other fruits they buy from area farmers; Southern insists on "tree-ripened and vine-ripened fruit: If you don't have flavor to start with, you won't have flavor in your jams and jellies."That's Southern's primary advice for cooks who want to try their hand at this vanishing art.Unripe fruits might not produce enough juice, and he doesn't like to water his jellies down."You want to crush them enough so you get a lot of juice, so you can start them cooking without adding water," Southern counsels. Adding water dilutes the flavor — and, he notes wryly, "that water doesn't gel very good."His other advice: "Do it according to the book."Cooks shouldn't even think about making preserves without following the procedures for sterilizing equipment to the letter or the jars could harbor life-threatening bacteria."I've learned there's a lot of work to it," Southern says. "You can't try any shortcuts."These days, Southern makes maybe one batch of jelly — for him, that's 13 or 14 pints — a week."After having quadruple bypass surgery, I slowed down two years ago," he says. "The good Lord willing, I'll keep doing a little bit of it."After all, he admits, "getting letters from people all over the country bragging on how good it was makes me feel pretty good."And few Saturdays go by without some new customer rejoicing at finding a little jar of childhood memories at the Southerns' table.

If you intend your preserves for long storage, unrefrigerated, you must follow rigid guidelines in sterilizing jars and processing the preserves.Canning equipment can be found at hardware stores, online and at some cooking stores. You will need a canner fitted with a removable jar rack or a large kettle deep enough that the jars will be covered with an inch of boiling water, as well as jar lifters — special tongs to lift the jars out of the hot water. A stainless-steel funnel makes filling the jars easier.Sterilizing and processing instructions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "Principles of Home Canning:"• For processing the preserves, Mason-type, threaded home-canning jars with self-sealing, two-piece canning lids are the best choice. The jars may be reused, as may the screw bands, if they are unmarred, but the self-sealing lids cannot be reused and should be less than five years old.• Wash empty jars in hot water with detergent and rinse well, or put through a dishwasher cycle.• To sterilize empty jars, put them right side up on the rack in a boiling-water canner. Fill canner and jars with hot (not boiling) water to 1 inch above the jar tops. Boil 10 minutes. Remove and drain hot sterilized jars just before filling them. Be careful not to touch the insides of the jars with anything unsterile; lids, screw bands and tongs with which you handle the jars should be sterilized as well. Save the hot water in the canner for processing the filled jars.• Fill each jar almost to the top; leave inch of "head space" above the food and below the lid. Clean any fruit off the rim of the jar with a dampened paper towel. Place the sterilized self-sealing lid, gasket down, onto the jar; then fit the metal screw band over the flat lid and tighten according to the instructions on the box.• Replace the jar rack with the filled jars in the hot water in the canner, making sure water covers the jars by at least an inch. Bring to a full boil before starting your timer. (Some sources call for bringing the water to a boil first and then lowering the rack with the jars into the boiling water.) The USDA calls for boiling the filled jars for at least 5 minutes; Curtis Southern boils his for 12 minutes.• When you remove the hot jars, do not retighten their lids. Cool the jars on a rack or towels at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours.• After cooling, remove the screw bands. The lid should be concave (curved slightly downward in the center). Test the seal by pressing the middle of the lid with a finger or thumb. If the lid springs up when you release your finger, the lid is not properly sealed.• If lids are tightly vacuum-sealed, wash the jars and lids to remove any food residue, then rinse and dry jars. Label, date and store in a clean, cool, dark, dry place.SOURCE: USDA.

Southern cut his normal large-batch recipes for this jam and for fig preserves down to a manageable size for home cooks. The blackberries should be sorted — use only fully ripe berries — and washed before crushing. He suggests using a potato masher to crush them.6 cups crushed ripe blackberries1.75-ounce package powdered pectin8½ cups sugarSterilize canning jars and lids according to accompanying instructions.Measure crushed berries into a large stainless-steel pot. Add powdered pectin and stir thoroughly. Place over high heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. When berries have come to a full rolling boil, with bubbles over the entire surface, add the sugar. Still stirring constantly, return the mixture to a full rolling boil and then boil hard for about 4 minutes, stirring constantly.Remove pot from heat and skim foam from the surface, using a large stainless-steel spoon. Pour mixture into hot sterilized canning jars. (Southern keeps his jars and lids in boiling water up to the time he pours in the fruit mixture). Fill to ¼ inch from the tops of the jars.Seal jars with sterile lids; using a jar lifter or jar rack, lower jars into a kettle of hot water large enough to accommodate the jars; the water should cover the jars by 1 to 2 inches. Bring to a full boil; when the water reaches a full boil, start timing and boil the jars for 12 minutes.Remove the jars from the water bath and allow to cool to room temperature; then label and date them.Makes 5 to 6 pints.<i>Nutritional analysis per 1-tablespoon serving, based on 5 pints: 48 calories, trace fat, 12 grams carbohydrates, trace protein, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 1 milligram sodium, trace dietary fiber, 0 percent of calories from fat.— <b>Curtis Southern</b></i>

5 pounds ripe figs¾ cup water6 cups sugar¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juicePlace figs in a large stainless-steel pot and cover with boiling water. Let the figs sit in the hot water 10 minutes, then drain. Remove stems and chop figs roughly.Return chopped figs to large stainless-steel pot and add water and sugar. Bring to a slow boil, stirring occasionally, and cook until sugar dissolves. Raise the heat and boil fig mixture rapidly until it becomes thick, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add lemon juice and boil 1 minute longer, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.Pour into hot sterile jars, filling them ¼ inch from top, and process as directed above.Makes 5 pints.<i>Nutritional analysis per 1-tablespoon serving: 40 calories, trace fat, 10 grams carbohydrates, trace protein, 0 milligrams cholesterol, trace sodium, trace dietary fiber, 0 percent of calories from fat.<b>— Curtis Southern</b></i>