We also used this porch in the summer to peel and prepare fruit or vegetables for canning. It was shady and cool there since the back of the house sat right up against the mountain behind it . There was only a narrow walkway between the house and the mountain with a rock retaining wall on one side of this walkway and the house on the other. You stepped off this porch into the side yard and just a few steps from the back porch was the cellar. This cellar was dug out into the side of the mountain and held potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips and beets and apples in the fall . It was always cool inside and smelled of moist earth and root vegetables
If you went up the side of the hill and around to the back of the cellar there was an opening directly into the loft of the cellar. And in this loft on any given, hot, midsummer day you might find a churn full of Cherry Bounce ( my uncles special home made cherry wine) He checked on it every day while it was fermenting and that was how I came to know about it. This particular uncle didn't go far that I wasn't on his heels. Of course , my grandmother being a devout christian woman knew nothing of my uncles wine-making activities . But often wondered aloud, why she never had many cherries to harvest and that no matter what she did to discourage the birds from eating them , nothing ever worked .
Just on up the hill from the back of the cellar there was a flat area on the side of the mountain that was a small, thriving fruit orchard with peach, apple and cherry trees. Ahh ....but then I am wandering too far afield from the back porch.
Anyway, even though this back porch somehow always seemed to be associated with work, it was always pleasant there and I fondly remember spending many happy hours there with my mom and my grandmother, with my feeble attempts to help peel and chop the fruit that would that winter, become fried apple pies or Apple Brown Betty and peach cobblers and occcasionally a cherry pie! Some of the fruit would become jams and jellies to grace our hot biscuits at breakfast time on cold winter mornings, to go along with our fresh home made sausage or pork chops with red eye gravy or ham with cream gravy . I can still smell those breakfasts cooking and smell the coffee as I slowly came awake in the pre-dawn hours of the day. Momaw rarely had to call anyone to breakfast. I think if she had started cooking at 1:00 am that everyone in the house would have gladly crawled out of the bed and assembled at the table.
Again I have wandered away from this back porch, this time, back into the kitchen. So let's just wander on thru the kitchen and out onto the other back porch. This porch was always covered with dappled shade from the huge pear tree that overhung this part of the yard. And near-by was the well. This was an old fashioned well with a bucket and pulley and had the sweetest , coldest water I ever put in my mouth. Sometimes when I am really thirsty , I can still taste it. But this back porch was rarely used except as a means of getting to the well or to the pantry that was accessed from this porch. All the work was done on the other end of the kitchen, and the sitting done on the front porch after the day was done .
So this back porch was perfect for a young girl's moments of solitude. For daydreaming, for wishing , for reading or for the recording of her thoughts on paper. Ideal for just sitting and doing nothing except listening to the birds in the pear trees or the buzz of the honey bees around the holllyhocks in the side yard. I spent many peaceful contented hours there, planning the future that seemed so very far away.
You know I always thought that the "well side porch" was only special to me. But recently my sister told me about spending many quiet times in the shade of the pear tree on this back porch as well as lying under the weeping willow tree. Ahhh but the weeping willow is another story for another time. But, I at least know now, where my little sister was all those times when after getting my daily dose of contentment, I would go looking for her to go wading in the creek and she couldnt be found. She had come through the kitchen (maybe as I was going around the house calling her ) to the well-side porch for her daily dose of quiet, peaceful , lazy introspection and a cool drink of water as she closed her eyes and listened to the birds and the bees and the sound of tranquility.