Farms and Gardens October 3, 2007
Posted by Diane Bird in : All Posts , trackback
This is a picture of our large garden in 1980 when we lived on the Lost River outside of Shoals, Indiana.
Now, September of 2007, it is cleanup time in my yard and garden, and as I pick the last of this year’s pathetically small tomatoes and peppers I think about years past. I’ve often wondered what Sam and Anna grew on their farm, and once they moved to town did they have a garden? I remember Granddad taking us kids out to collect eggs from the hen house behind the Central City house, but that memory doesn’t include a garden.
How about “victory gardens”? Barbara and Jackie, do you have memories of those, and did you have one? Mike and I have been watching “The War” on PBS, another wonderful Ken Burns production, and so my memories of ration cards found among Mother’s things after her death have been stirred. Daddy worked in the Safeway store and we were able to get some fresh produce, and I clearly recall the happy days when bananas were available.. but we had no victory garden.
Mother was happy to get off the farm, I’ve always thought, because she talked only of the tiresome work involved, and because she showed no interest whatsoever when we started a strawberry patch in the back yard of the Boise house.
When Mike and I moved to Indiana in 1975, we put in a huge garden, and I couldn’t help but think at the time that Mother would not approve of my agreeing to work so hard, and to doing what she herself so energetically avoided. We found it rewarding and fulfilling, though, to grow and put up food for the year. It occurs to me in retrospect, all these many years later, that knowing we could always make a run to the store made our “experiment” more fun than work. It was a beautiful garden with everything from asparagus and rhubarb to beans and corn, and yes, a strawberry patch.
I’ve continued to garden through the years, reducing gradually to just tomatoes and green peppers, plus basil, chives, dill, and the old standbys sage and thyme. I no longer dry and bottle herbs, though, just enjoy them fresh. However, there was a time when I was the local “herb lady” and was invited to address women’s groups about the practical and medicinal uses of herbs.
This was a sad, sad year for gardens here in Indiana. It was very hot and very dry for most of the growing season, and being used to an average of an inch of rain every week, no one was set up to water their gardens, either by sprinklers or by irrigation. Only my flowers thrived, and I believe they did so only because I planted them in a mixture of homemade compost and purchased topsoil added to a triple-dug bed. I built a new compost bin this summer, and with a little help from purchased compost starter I am “growing” a good beginning for next year. One thing about farmers and gardeners: they get discouraged, but they seldom give up.
Share your farm and garden stories, past and present!
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Mom and Dad always had a garden on the farm — you might say they both had green thumbs! They always worked at it together in the evenings and during the day, the rest of we peons were enlisted to weed and pick potato bugs. I think the folks enjoyed working in the garden, although it was necessary during the depression to grow as much as you could and to freeze and can everything you raised. They always had peas, green beans, onions, tomatoes, eggplant and especially sweet corn and most anything and everything that would grow. Of course, it took alot of water and I can still see Dad carrying pails and pails of water to water the plants — and it wasn’t a simple matter of turning a spigot either because we didn’t have electricity on the farm until the late 1930 ’s. The garden was located to the south of the house up to the road which ran by our house . I would say half of the garden space was put in potatoes — a necessary staple at our house. Farmers ran on meat & potatoes, you know! Then later on, Dad cleared a space behind his shop and the chicken house for a garden — mainly because the windmill was on the other side of the shop and he was able to ditch the water from the windmill to the garden which really lightened the load for the water haulers.
But once the garden started producing, the canning began! We canned jars and jars of everything they raised except the potatoes! I remember one year that the cabbage outdid itself and so they started to make sauerkraut. It sat in these huge vats until they started to ferment and then it was canned. We had a good sized cellar where the canned goods were stored on shelves along the wall and at the yon end of the cellar was the potato bin and as I remember we never had to buy potatoes as they always raised enough to last the winter. When planting time came the next spring the potatoes that were left were cut up so there were 2 or 3 eyes to each chunk and were planted for that growing season.
We had an Apricot tree when I was a kid so they were always canned along with anything else available. Across the road from our mailbox was a huge stand of chokecherry bushes (behind which Vi and Dick hid the night of their chevarie), so we always had plenty of chokecherry jelly and jam. Every so often when we ran out of meat, a steer or a hog was butchered and then we canned meat. You’ll never know what ambrosia is until you taste canned beef. Sausage was made of the pork and it was made into balls and fried, then stuffed into the quart jars and the lard was poured over and the jars were sealed. Sausage made that way could also be kept in one of those huge vats or jars as long as they were kept in the cellar with the lard poured over to seal.
We didn’t have any way to freeze produce until the late 1930’s and then the folks rented a freezer box at the Fairmont Creamery in Grand Island. In about 1945, Chapman put in a Locker and then that was much closer to home to have their meat, etc., stored. Home freezers didn’t come out until several years later. I guess I’ve said enough about all this — talk about going down memory lane!
Some memories from the Mike & Diane Bird farm, circa 1976:
Mom & Dad were perfectly honest about what was being put up in canning jars during the summer. I knew what pickle relish was and it certainly was not what they were preparing. Green tomatoes disguised, canned and served as pickle relish? This kid from suburban Los Angeles wasn’t to be fooled.
“But it tastes the same!”
“No thank you” as I passed the jar.
On the table was also found green beans rescued from the awful plague of Japanese bean beetles that descended upon our garden. OK those tasted good, just plain, steamed or canned and served later. Just like store bought.
Mom and Dad did work very hard on that garden and I’m sure I never showed my appreciation, likely snubbing my nose at much of the food that was served. I eventually learned that it was OK to try new things from snapping turtle to squirrel to rattlesnake, and finally that tomato relish even made it past my palate. I guess it did taste pretty close to the real thing after all.
I’ve enjoyed these two entries about gardening. Diane, I think I might be like your mother in that gardening held no appeal whatsoever. Most we’ve ever had for a garden was a few tomato plants and now I find it much easier to go to the farmer’s market or to enjoy the surplus friends give us from time to time.
Barbara, I don’t have many memories of the vegetable gardens you talk about but I do remember picking potato bugs off those plants. In town Dad had a wonderful row of raspberry bushes and were they ever good! Also I remember mom working hard in her flower garden. All the phlox that covered the cellar at the back of the house in town and the curved sidewalk at the side of the house bloomed profusely with daffodils, grape hyacinths etc. I’m pretty lazy about outside work but I love keeping house and don’t find that tedious at all.
Oh yes, Marty did you actually eat snapping turle, squirrel and RATTLESNAKE! Come on, that is ridiculous!
Not sure about rattlesnake, but that’s probably selective memory! I think about the only thing we didn’t eat was possum. They didn’t grace our table because you can’t get close enough to kill and skin one because they smell so horrible! They would steal eggs from the henhouse and come up on the back porch to steal the cats’ food. I could always smell them coming.
We did have snapping turtle and squirrel though, both provided by neighbors and friends. I have a story about each: The turtle arrived alive in the back of a friend’s pickup, and he told me to boil water in the biggest pot I had (my canning pot). He put the pot of water on the tailgate of his pickup, dropped the turtle in and slammed the lid on… and told me to hold it on tight! Kinda felt like murder. Sure did taste wonderful, though. Now squirrels taste pretty good, too, and are supposedly easy to skin and clean, but Mike (being a city boy) wasn’t very experienced at the skin and clean part. Yup, kinda fuzzy eating.
Being softhearted, we didn’t hunt and fished very little, but we did have a nuisance groundhog that we lured close to the house with a mineral/salt block. Mike shot him, and boy was that good eating!
We raised and butchered and ate our own pigs, chickens and goats. The only problem was that we named them all and became attached to them, so it became very hard to take a bite of “Bertha”.
We had some wonderful, one-time experiences while we lived on Lost River (emphasis on “one-time”!!!) Fortunately, I never have to make head cheese again, which was the worst of the worst.
Well, I’m wondering how you fix turtle to eat? I remember the winter we went to the Baja in a trailer caravan, some Mexicans had prepared Turtle Soup for our evening meal when we stopped at Santa Rosa. I thought it was quite good but Loren wouldn’t try it and he ended up eating soup with a lady who had brought her own and I can’t remember what kind it was! Which was strange because he ate frog legs and eel which I wouldn’t. When Rich started to hunt when he was a kid we told him not to kill anything he didn’t want to eat — so we had squirrel along with the pheasant & quail and he brought home frog legs from the river — Rich and his Dad thought it tasted like chicken. But ground hog, opossum and raccoon were not on my list to cook!
The first year Loren and I were married in 1944, the hired man ran over a little pig and broke his jaw. So it was given to me to raise — in the meantime he became such a big pet, that when it came time to either butcher or sell == we sold! I couldn’t entertain the thought of eating him. And his name wasn’t even Bertha!