| PRESERVING OUR FOOD The most basic things to comfortable living in the cold winter was having enough food, warm clothing and blankets and coal and wood for the stoves. In August and September the vegtables from dad's and papow cloud's gardens would ripen and be ready to eat or preserve. Mom, Aunt Pauline and Mamow would all work at Mamow Cloud's house. A fire would be built in the front yard near the pump. Large rocks would ring the fire high enough to sit a washtub ontop of the rocks without smothering the fire. Someone had to be watching the fire and feeding the wood to keep the fire hot at all times while everyone was busing in the kitchen preparing the food for canning. The biggest crop would always be corn, tomatoes and potatoes. Tomatoes would be placed in a large pot of hot water just until the skin split. The tomatoes would go into a bowl or onto the table for pealing. The skin comes off really easy. After peeling the tomatoes they would be quartered and placed into canning jars along with their juices. The lids and cans would have been boiling on the stove also to get them steralized. The cans and lids would be lifted from the boiling water as they were needed. Once the lids were on they would be carried outside and the washing tub of boiling water would be filled with jars of tomatoes. They would have to stay in the water for a certain amount of time before they were removed, brought back into the house and set on a seperate area where they would stay until a popping noise indicated that they had sealed themselves. This was the process everything that was canned. Cucumbers and beans were brought in by the bushel barrells. Cucumbers would be washed and placed into clean jars and a liquid filled with spices would be poured over the pickles, lids screwed on tightly and carried to the yard for boiling over the fire. Some of the cucumbers were sliced to make bread and butter pickles. Beans had to have their strings removed and be broken up before they could be blanched and put through the canning process. Green beans were also preserved in a different fashion. The strings would be removed, beans washed and then the stringing of the beans would begin. I remember my fingers being raw from doing this. A large string and needle would be handed out by Mamow Cloud. The needle would be stuck though the middle of the greenbean and the bean pushed down to the end of the string. Everytime a string would be full of beans and me and my cousins said we were done, Mamow Cloud would push those beans down on the string as tight as she could and hand it back to us. The string would only be half full. Once all the beans were strung they would be laid on a sheet or other old material in the sunlight, on the ground or on top of the smokehouse roof. These beans were referred to as shuckbeans. When they were completely dried they would be hung up in the smokehouse or dad's barn until they were cooked. Beets would have the ends with the roots cut off, washed and blanched. Beets were a root vegetable like potatoes, parsnips and leaks. Beets also had to be put through the canning and boiling in the washtub phase of preserving. In the 50's corn was eaten as it rippened, not canned. It was boiled and cut off the cob and fried in an iron skillet with lots of butter and salt until it was soft. The corn that was not eaten was left to dry out. The dried corn stalks with the corn attached would be cut down and brought off the mountain on a cart by the mule and placed in our barn. The corn would be removed from the corn shucks and piled in a corner. The shucks were used in the past for matress filling. The corn would be shelled off the corn into containers and saved to be ground into meal or fed to the animals. Onions were a staple of our gardens for flavoring almost every dish made. The onions would be pulled out of the ground whole. The green stems would be tied into bunches and allowed to dry by hanging them like the beans were hung up in the barn or smoke house. Potatoes were dug up in a quanity to last for a few days. They were mashed or fried. When you were tired of having mashed they would be fried until you got tired of them that way. Potatoes would last for a longer period of time when they were placed in a cool dry dark place. Daddy had built a dairy for storing his vegtables, fruits and canned goods. He dug into the mountain and built two sides and a front with a door. The floor and back wall was of dirt. The air in the dairy was always cool. There were shelves to put the canned stuff. Bins or containers for the potatoes, green tomatoes and unwrippened fruit. Other food stuffs were gotten in the surrounding mountains, valleys and creeks. Animals were raised for food and some animals were hunted for food. continued . . . . . - |
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