This is Weird, but Stay with Me

I don't know if any of you have Market Wagon in your area, but we have recently gotten it here.  It's a very good way to support local farms and other businesses and try new things.  One of my favorite finds has been garlic dill sauerkraut from Cultured Traditions:

(They also have a seaweed flavor, which I may not be brave enough to try.)

ANYway. . .

My mother was a canner. She also froze lots of food but calling her a "freezer" doesn't work.  One of the things she would put up (that's a professional canning term) was sauerkraut.  As you can imagine, I was drafted many, many, many times during canning season to chop cabbage or shell beans or stir apples or fill various jars or do whatever an extra hand could do.   Except in a single case under singular circumstances.

I could not help with kraut if I was on my period.

Re-read that.

Because if a menstruating woman helps with kraut-making, the batch will go bad.

You can also re-read that if you choose.

Being a skeptical, I'll-show-you teenager, one year I lied about my period and helped with the canning.

And the whole batch was ruined.

And Mama angrily--- surprisingly angrily --- asked me, "Were you having your period when we put this up?'

All of which to say that I wonder if menstruating women in all the sauerkraut plants everywhere get a few days off each month.

Also, as if that weren't enough, a favorite story:  One of my mother's good friends was also a gardener and canner.  Mama went to visit her in the hospital after she'd had a hysterectomy, and Miss Robbie --- first thing --- said, "Now I can make kraut whenever I want!"