Autumn, or as we always called it, Fall. What a beautiful time of year. I love all seasons but Fall is my favorite. This is the time of year that nature prepares the trees that beautify our land for winter. With different trees having different times for providing a cacophony, that is a new word I learned, of reds, greens, yellows, oranges, and browns that we see, they seem to be trying to outdo each other. In our area, this time occurs sometime during later October. As I see these changes, it takes me back to my childhood on the farm on Queens Creek and many pleasant memories.
By now, most crops would have been harvested and put away for our and the livestock on the farm’s survival throughout the long, cold, winter. Potatoes and cabbage would have been buried under a mound of dirt and straw for preservation and use after freezing began. As I recall, they were placed on a bed of straw on the ground, then covered with a heavy layer of straw, and then covered with as much as six inches of dirt. This kept the vegetables fresh throughout the winter. You simply dug a small hole into the mound and removed the vegetables you needed and recovered them with dirt and straw.
Apples would have been picked and placed in a dark dry place to keep them as long as possible. Many people treated the apples with a sulphur smoke to preserve them. I personally did not like the flavor of sulphured apples. I doubt that anyone does this today. Another way of preserving them was to peel and thinly slice them and then place them in the hot sun on a clean cloth, covering them with cheese cloth to keep the flying creatures out. Usually, we would dry them on the roof of a chicken house, taking them up each evening and placing them back the following day. After they were properly dehydrated, they would be placed in paper flour sacks and stored for later use. Have you ever had fried dried apple pies, or dried apple pies, or apple stack cake? Believe me, if you haven’t, do it before you go to your rewards. There is nothing better than a country meal with one of the above as dessert. On motorcycle trips, our group always looks for a fried apple pie sign and when found it commands an immediate stop. It is really hard to find fried dried apple pies, so when you do partake of them generously.
Green beans would have been picked during the summer an preserved in different manners for winter use. They would have been canned, pickled, or made into what we called “shucked beans”. I haven’t had shuck beans for many years, probably at least fifty of more. Preparing the beans for “shucking” or drying was a family affair. After stringing but not breaking, the beans would be strung on a long string with a needle and then hung behind the kitchen stove for drying. I don’t recall the length of time it took but once properly dry, they would be placed in paper flour sacks along with black pepper and placed in storage. The reason for the pepper was to discourage bugs from getting in the beans. Dehydration, the fancy term that is used today to describe drying foods, is used as if it had just been thought of. Farmers had for centuries used this method and just called it drying. I think I like the old term better. Cooking shuck beans was about like cooking a bale of straw. I think my mother would soak them overnight and then place them along with some water and a chunk of cured pork into an iron pot, everybody had one of these back then, and cook them, it seemed, nearly all day. If done properly, the taste was wonderful and they were very tender. When eating them and their being unbroken, they were sometimes like picking up a fork full of hay.
I personally did not like pickled beans. As a kid, I think I called them spoiled beans. They really had an obnoxious aroma. In other words they stunk, but to each his own. Other crops that would have been pickled would have been corn, beets, cabbage or kraut as it is called when pickled, cucumbers preserved several different ways, and green peppers stuffed with cabbage and then have the top sewn on and pickled.
All of the above would be placed in the cellar, a large underground room with masonry or rock walls that maintained a constant temperature throughout the winter. Also in the cellar would be quarts and half gallon canning jars filled with, green beans, beets, blackberries, canned sausage and pork tenderloin, assorted jars of cucumbers either pickled or salted, jars of molasses, jars of corn, either pickled on the cob or cut off, pints and quarts of blackberry jam and jelly, raspberry jam or jelly, apple jelly, apple butter, peach preserves,canned peaches, and canned apples.
During all of this food preparation, the male members of the family would be out cutting a winters supply of firewood for the kitchen stove. Coal would have already been hauled and placed in the coal house for use in the large heating stove and the fireplaces throughout the house. There was a family named Roberts that lived near where Queens Creek road entered Big Hurricane Creek road. They operated a small coal mine along the road and my brother and myself on several occasions would haul wagon loads of coal for use during the winter. I have no idea what the price of a ton of coal is today but back then I think we paid perhaps three dollars for a wagon load of coal. I believe we hauled coal for a couple of our neighbors also.
To obtain wood for the kitchen, we simply went into the woods and selected trees of a manageable size, cut the down, and hauled them to the barn lot for cutting up. Usually we used oak or hickory. Untill they were all gone, we would cut dead chestnut trees for kindling. They were easy to split and caught fire quickly, which was important on a cold winter morning and you were trying to start a fire in a cold room. My brother and I would usually do the sawing of the wood into lengths with a two-man saw and my Dad would split it into burning sized sticks. It would be stacked and hauled to the kitchen as needed. At this time we would also be cutting wood to be used to heat the evaporation pan used in the making of molasses. It was cut to longer lengths and was always hardwood in that it burned longer and hotter than other woods.
Along about the first of November and frost had begun, someone would decide that is was time for killing hogs. I don’t remember how many we would kill but two comes to mind. Two or three neighbors would show up to help with the chore. The hog was shot, usually with a 22 caliber rifle and then had its throat cut and bled out. It was then hung and dipped in a vat of boiling water, placed usually on a sled and then all of the hair scraped off with butcher knives. It was then rehung, all of the insides removed and then placed back on the sled for cutting into hams, bacon, sausage meat, etc. The better part of that night would be spent in grinding, seasoning, and frying the sausage patties, then placing them in glass jars and pouring hot grease from the frying over them and placing the jars in the cellar for winter consumption. The hams and pork sides would have been placed in the smoke house, allowed to cool out and then heavily salted down with salt and perhaps a small amount of sugar in the salt. After a time of salt curing, the meat would have been hung from the smoke house rafters and a slow fire built in a sand filled washtub using green hickory wood until the outside of the meat turned a golden brown. After two or three days of this it would remain hanging or placed on a bench in the smoke house for use untill it ran out, perhaps in late spring or early summer. A large ham, twenty-five pounds or larger reaches it optimum aging flavor at about twelve months into the curing process. It may, of course, be eaten at any point prior to that. Perhaps this will bring back memories to some of you who have had the pleasure of home cured ham or bacon along with biscuits, eggs the way you like them, your favorite style of gravy, whether brown, cream, or red-eye made with some coffee, and some apple butter fresh out of the jar from the cellar. If you lived back then you will remember that it was hard times during the depression of the 30’s but we were never hungry. The hog’s head would have been processed and made into something calles “souse”. A really nasty mess in my opinion. I never recall eating it although my mother prepared it. I also feel the same way about the pigs feet which were pickled. I had seen where that hog walked and wanted no part of the feet.
Now, with all of our food prepared for the season, attention would have been paid to the livestock. That really is a year round job. It would have started in early spring with cleaning of barn stalls of accumulated animal manure which would have been spread on the fields as fertilizer. Hay, such as soybeans, lespideza, clover, and oats would have been harvested over the summer and placed in the barn for winter feeding. Corn would have been picked, shucked, and placed in the corn crib. The fodder or remaining corn stalks would have been cut and placed in shocks in the field for carrying to the feed lot on an as needed basis. Oats would have been cradled and tied into bundles and then placed in a hay stack around a central pole. Stacking them in this manner provided protection from rain. A feed room in the barn would contain large bags of various kinds of animal feed, horse, cattle, and hog to supplement the food that had been raised for them.
With all of this done, it would seem that a long period of rest would have been earned. But no, there were still the daily chores to carry out that were not seasonal. Live stock don’t sleep in like people so that care went on both early in the morning and late in the evening. Milking had to be done, the animals fed and cared for, fences repaired, and many other chores that go on daily the year round.
It amazes me that each year as I see the colors of fall approaching that all of this comes to mind. Yes, it was hard work. Would I trade todays life style to return to it? YOU BET!
I hope that as you read this and see a tree with changing colors that it will arouse the pleasant memories of your life as it does me. I, in my mind, know that God overrides unpleasant memories of long ago with the pleasant ones. Just further proof of his existence. He does his painting with a beautiful brush.
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