Book excerpt: In Putting Up, author Steve Dowdney colorfully and descriptively guides readers safely through the home canning process. In his plainspoken narrative, Dowdney explains how to put up crops harvested during each month of the year and includes 65 of the most popular and delicious recipes he produces for his successful canning business. Also included is a resource section that contains information on where all essential canning supplies can be purchased. More than just a how-to manual, Putting Up is a wonderful guide for canners and non-canners alike. It is chock full of anecdotes, stories and vignettes of a long gone agrarian south that filled the author's youth and still fills his heart and memory. For twelve years, Steve Dowdney was the owner and chief operator of South Carolina's premiere small batch processing and canning company. As founder of Rockland Plantation Products, he takes great pride in the knowledge that the company's products taste exactly like the best of a grandmother's home put up stores. An avid writer with a novel in the works, Dowdney is a former Ranger, Airborne and Special Forces qualified combat veteran, and a graduate of The Citadel where he and fellow classmate Pat Conroy co-wrote the yearbook. He resides in Charleston, SC. In Putting Up, author Steve Dowdney colorfully and descriptively guides readers safely through the home canning process. In his plainspoken narrative, Dowdney explains how to put up crops harvested during each month of the year and includes 65 of the most popular and delicious recipes he produces for his successful canning business. Also included is a resource section that contains information on where all essential canning supplies can be purchased. More than just a how-to manual, Putting Up is a wonderful guide for canners and non-canners alike. It is chock full of anecdotes, stories and vignettes of a long gone agrarian south that filled the author's youth and still fills his heart and memory.