Every so often I have one of those humbling experiences that feels sort of like hitting my head on a low ceiling.

I once lived in an old house whose dimly lit basement was five feet deep at the bottom of the stairs. The distance between the floor and ceiling gradually expanded to eight feet by the time a person reached the washer and dryer, but I always managed to stand up straight too soon.

Let me tell you, dealing with the fallout from my recent comments on canning has put more knots on my head than doing laundry in that cellar.

To all the canners who are steamed at me, I hereby concede defeat. I am utterly vanquished. I was wrong to have viewed canning in strictly practical terms. I will never again discount the passion that you feel for this activity or the spiritual rewards that you derive from your labors. I have heard your message and am now reformed.

Upon reflection, I should have known better than to analyze canning in such crass terms as cost-benefit and physical comfort. After all, vegetable gardening, which is my love, would fail the same test. It’s hot and dirty work, and unless you harvest your own seeds and have adequate rainfall, you’ll end up paying more for the pleasure of being sunburned and bitten by horse flies than you’d spend buying your veggies at the grocery store or farmers’ market.

And even the toil of weeding has its own dare I say spiritual payoff. It’s a deliberate, meditative activity that for me is one of the most pleasant aspects of gardening.

Having spent sufficient time in the boiling water bath of reader ire, I now see the stark parallel between what canners do over the hot stove in the hottest months of the year and what I do in my garden. Just as I consider the satisfaction of growing food for the table to be priceless, the canners take the deepest pleasure in putting up their harvest.

The reader who has let me have it the loudest is April Patterson. After making her case in person, and being unsatisfied with my ho-hum response, she sent me her thoughts in an e-mail, noting that she was raising her canning tongs in protest.

First, she takes issue with my preference for freezing green beans in plastic zipper bags.

“From a purely rational standpoint, you are probably right as far as cost of the preservation materials. The sleek, modern plastic bags stylized with the pretty colored closures are almost too good to be true. Everything looks cute and snug as a bug in them. They’re cheap, require no real storage space, and you give them a toss in the wastebasket instead of the dishwasher when the contents are gone. However, to put in bluntly, this plastic … lacks soul.”

When it comes to the canning process, April can be downright poetic. She muses on the artistry of selecting ingredients, chopping them by hand and processing them, and finally, reflects upon the moment when she can stand back and admire the beauty of the colorful jars, lined up on a cupboard shelf.

“There’s not a prettier shade of red on Christmas morning than a jar of pickled baby beets,” she writes. “Turn it over in your hands and marvel at it. … And it’s not just the appearance that drives the spiritual self, it is the entire process that is so gratifying, from picking the produce in the morning to hearing that sweet ‘ping’ calling out to you as the jars seal later in the afternoon, while you are sitting down with that feeling of fat squirrel satisfaction. This is not something you can measure in cold … cash or figures.”

If the Ball jar people are looking for a new spokeswoman, I’ve got a candidate.

I also received a practical suggestion from Jeanne Klein, who gets around the problem of a hot kitchen at the same time that she has found a way to can a smaller harvest of Roma tomatoes.

“My solution to canning is to spend a whole day doing it in the winter when it’s really cold outside,” she writes. “That way, I can heat up the house with the stove, while reminiscing about summer gardening! I have a small garden, so can’t grow hordes of tomatoes at once. So, instead, I harvest, wash and store them in big baggies in my extra freezer in the garage. Then, when the freezer fills up some winter, I thaw everything, cook it all down, strain away skin and seeds, cook it some more to make paste … and then can about 40 pints, which lasts me a year or two. This ‘mass-production’ method also concentrates all the work in one day, so it feels easier to accomplish than doing just a few cans at a time.”

Points taken.

When she’s not writing about foods and gardening, Gwyn Mellinger is teaching journalism at Baker University. Her phone number is (785) 594-4554.