In this episode of “Remebering the Way We Were” Arlene relates the annual ritual of canning farm produce for the winter.
Ernest Guest wrote a poem about one special summer activity that we are going to be visiting about today
There’s a wondrous smell of spices
In the kitchen,
Most bewitchin’;
There are fruits cut into slices
That just set the palate itchin’;
There’s the sound of spoon on platter
And the rattle and the clatter;
And a bunch of kids are hastin’
To the splendid joy of tastin’:
It’s the fragrant time of year
When fruit-cannin’ days are here.
There’s a good wife gayly smilin’
And perspirin’
Some, and tirin’;
And while jar on jar she’s pilin’
And the necks of them she’s wirin’
I’m a-sittin’ here an’ dreamin’
Of the kettles that are steamin’,
And the cares that have been troublin’
All have vanished in the bubblin’.
1 am happy that I’m here
At the cannin’ time of year.
Lord, I’m sorry for the feller
That is missin’
All the hissin’
Of the juices
Could you tell that poem was written by a man? Somehow my feelings about canning time are slightly different. How about yours? Canning time used to be running time. Run out to the garden and pick the green beans. Run out to the well to get water to wash the green beans. Run down cellars to get jars to can the green beans. Run out to the pigpen to pick up cobs to boil the water to process the beans and what a lot of cobs and fuel it did take to keep the water boiling long enough and hot enough to process those green beans.
Getting the fruit cellars well stocked for the coming season was a top priority for the homemaker in the 20s and 30s. You had to be frugal and not let an apple or green bean or plum go to waste if
it could be made into something and put in a jar. Of course, all those pesky jars had to be washed and sterilized and it seemed that everything would be ready at about the same time; the neighbor’s apples, your com and Aunt Susie’s plums or whatever.
Canning com was a really big deal and the men usually tried to help on this project. They would watch it carefully so that when it was just right. On the big morning everyone was rousted out of
bed early even the kids. Dad hitched the horses to an old milk cart he had made and we would all head for the sweet com patch. Only Dad and Mom were smart enough to decide if it was ready or not so they picked and the kids carried it back to the cart. When we got a full load we headed back to the pigpen where everyone helped with the husking. The kids were considered smart enough to handle the next step, the tedious silking job which was done next. Dad fixed some boards with big nails in the center and plunked an ear of silk corn and there were quite a few rejects. So back to the silkers for more attention. The corn would go on the nails and they would take a sharp knife and cut it off the cob into a drip pan, from there it went into big kettles for boiling. Remember how the milk from the kernels would pop and fly all over. You started with a clean kitchen and clean knives and pans and pretty soon no matter how careful you were there were com kernels and starchy juice all over everything.
After you boiled it for the prescribed amount of time, it was put into sterilized jars. You had to be especially careful about the jars because com spoils easily. When you had a full boiler ready the jars were dumped into the water for the processing stage. You worked very carefully with the jars on a rack or something to keep them from resting directly on the bottom of the boiler, a broken jar in the boiler was a real catastrophe. As soon as the water began to boil processing was timed very carefully. There’s a special time schedule for different foods and it varied on the size of the jar being used also. Most of our com was put up in pint sized jars but there were always a few boilers of quart sized for company, com picking time and threshers.
What character builders those hot fires of canning time were for the small frys of the family. They took endless trips to the pigpen to pick up cobs or to the woodpile to haul in wood to keep the water boiling. You had to run as fast as you could with Mother’s prophetic words spelling out the dire consequences of your tardiness ringing in your ears. Today’s young people would have no conception of how much work it took to keep water boiling in a boiler on the kitchen range for 3 hours or how impossibly hot; it could make a whole house on a July or August day without even a fan to cool it off.
The ads for the purchase of foods for canning were carefully studied. The neighbor ladies on the country phone lines speculated just where and what the best buys were. News of a good buy traveled up and down the country line in a hurry. Grocers were consumer oriented in those days too, even before high pressure advertising. They knew a good buy on sugar, vinegar or dry rubbers along with the specials on peaches and pears would get the housewives to their store pronto.
Helen Foster in her column, “No Time for Rocking” in the Sunday Register recently paid a tribute to those now forgotten small town grocers that I enjoyed and would like to share and I quote,
“One of my most popular diversions today is nostalgia. To some of us remembering and reliving are means of passing the time away. The true meaning of nostalgia is homesickness. Somehow, I just can’t think of it that way. I can become nostalgic about a definite time or event without becoming homesick. For example, I can well remember how the drain tray under the icebox sometimes would overflow and run little rivers across the congoleum rug but I surely feel no homesickness over it. I even remember the refrigerator that had to be defrosted. Certainly, nostalgia is looking back but not with regret or sadness. But there are things which are not only worth remembering but actually should not be forgotten”.
One of these is the old neighborhood grocery store. The one in my neighborhood was owned by Mr. Keberly. There were no signs, no advertising, but service was tops. Mr. Keberly cut his meat right before our very eyes. He would leave his dinner table to cut off a quarter’s worth of beef steak. He’d drop the hoe right where he stood in his garden to pack us a pint of vanilla ice cream. He offered no coupons, no trading stamps, and no cash drawings. What he did offer, without charge, was the first slice of dried beef off the hand operated meat slicer or if you had a cold, he would hand you stick of horehound candy. And speaking of candy, there was a case full of it. All kinds and colors of unwrapped candy for a penny. Some of it even was 2 for a penny. It brought a kind of sparkle to a child’s eyes that Disneyland would find hard to equal today. Daily, Mr. Keberly and his wife didn’t keep any store hours. They were there in the early morning and they were there in the late evening. They were there when gas was rationed. We were walking in those days toting heavy bags of food. The neighborhood grocery was mighty busy and handy.
Then the war ended and something happened. We were driving our cars again and parking them in huge parking lots. Soon we were walking down long aisles tossing food into carts and standing in long check-out lines. The little neighborhood grocery couldn’t compete. If ever anyone was justified in saying, “Where were you when I needed you?” it was the small neighborhood grocer.”
Now back to our script. There were interesting specialty items in those days like sauerkraut. The big heads of fresh cabbage were cut up on the sharp flat wooden cabbage shredders and put into
3 or 5 gallon jars. As Mom cut the cabbage the kids stomped it with a heavy wooden club that Dad had carved out of a post or something. We used the same one at our house for all the years that I can remember. As you kept stomping, the fresh juice started coming up. When you had the jar nearly filled with cabbage and liquid and quite a lot of salt it was covered with an old plate or round wooden board cut to fit the jar top. A clean rock on top held it all down. It was then left to process until cured. This usually took 6 weeks or longer. The first time it was used there was much comment and speculation. Was it as good as last years? Should it be left longer before using? And the kids said, “It sure is sauerkraut, all right!”
One intriguing part of the recipe for many pickles was making salt brine strong enough to float an egg. We’d watch and, sure enough, the egg would float. Then in would go the cucumbers for a prescribed amount of time. There were not as many different steps in pickling making. After the salt brine dip, the cucumbers were all shriveled and yucky looking, would go into sweet vinegar dip for sweet ones and dill vinegar ones for dill again for a number of days and changes of syrup. This is particularly true for sweet pickles. The women were always looking for new, different and easier recipes they could spring on their neighbors or threshers. Everything was used. I remember a ripe cucumber pickle made out of the bright yellow cucumbers that had gotten too big, probably missed the day the kids picked them to use for bread and butter for slicing or anything else. We always cut up the watermelon rind after we had eaten the watermelon to make delicious watermelon pickles. The only problem, particularly during depression years, was to justify the amount of sugar it took to make pickles. Reluctantly, watermelon rinds and cucumbers were sometimes passed on because we can’t afford all that sugar just for pickles.
One of my most vivid childhood memories is a disaster; the year the canned peas all spoiled and we didn’t get to use a single jar. A neighbor lady used to say you could pick peas all morning
and shell all afternoon and eat them for supper. Nobody knows how much work and how long it took to accumulate a few extra pints for canning. And then to have to empty them out, unused, is
traumatic. Mom vowed she’d never can peas again and I don’t think she ever did.
Applesauce, tomatoes, green beans and pickles were an ongoing all summer type job. You just kept adding a few jars to the shelf every few days as they got ready. It was as much part of the daily summer routine as dishwashing or bed making. Jelly and preserve making, however was a big deal. It was so important that it jelled just right and didn’t get overcooked in sugar. Mom
knew which plums or apples made the best jelly and waited and watched for them. When Serto, a pectin additive that aided in the jelling process came on the market, it was a big boon to the jelly
maker.
I loved apple butter making day. It always smelled so super good. You pushed cooked apples of a kind that would cook, to mush through a colander. Lots of sugar and various spices were added
and then it was simmered very slowly in our big enamel roaster on the back of the range all day long. When it arrived at the proper thickness it was canned in jars. The time to do apple butter was on a day when you had a roaring fire going anyway to can something else. Though I haven’t had any years, I still lay homemade fresh apple butter on fresh baked bread up at the top of all time delicacies.
Tomato preserves made with a strong lemon flavor, grape jellies and jams as well as apples and plum jellies and jams and preserves were all popular. Chunks of old paraffin were melted in an old coffee can on the back of the range too pour over the top of the jams and jellies in their assorted plain glass jars. This sealed them and they would keep well for long periods. The kids always liked to experiment with the warm paraffin getting it all over their fingers making odd shapes and even chewing it like gum when we were small.
Sometime during the late 30s, pressure cookers began appearing on the market. There was much discussion on how safe they were. Neighbors always knew someone up north or down south who had one explode with dire results and they were terribly expensive. But gradually people began getting them and what an improvement they were. My parents’ old pressure canner is still in the attic on the farm. You couldn’t process as many jells at the time as in the big boiler, but the processing was cut more than in half for most foods. Anything that would speed up that hot job was a popular item in the kitchens of mid America. The only real fun part about canning was taking the filled jars to the fruit cellar and watching them accumulate on the shelves. How proud even the kids were as the shelves slowly filled.
Thinking back what a marvelous security blanket that those filled jars must have represented to rural families particularly. Come what may, hard times, snowstorms, blocked roads or unexpected company you always had that good old fruit cellar to fall back on. And the eating that came from those shelves was mighty good.
I got a good chuckle out of a recent Erma Bombeck column, “Technology lets children survive 20th century life”. When I think this life of old time canning program and I quote,
“My kids think a pioneer is someone without a clothes dryer. They’ve been raised in a world of electrical outlets; miracle fabric, one size fits all, and just adds water. They don’t know what an alley is or washer wringer, piece of coal, a plain white T-shirt, a pen wiper or a doily. Some of them have never had personal contact with a basement, a bus transfer, a screen door that didn’t have glass replacement or for that matter, a person who didn’t have a checking account. I never look at my children that I don’t fall on my knees and say Thank you God for making these children in the 21st century where technology. They would never have survived without it. Thank you too for making doors that close automatically behind them, otherwise large office buildings, schools and apartment doors would be open to the elements. Thank you for drip dry and permanent press, without them I would never permit my children to give their right names anywhere. Thank you for head phones for stereos or I would have gone deaf long before last year. Thank you for electric dishwashers. It takes a lot to admit that the first ones made with just 2 hands and feet just didn’t work out. How kind of you to assess their limitations and give them ovens and refrigerators and pets that clean themselves. Thank you for 40-gallon hot water heaters that take them through a complete shampoo without waiting for new water to heat. Thank you for pocket computers so they no longer have to find out so soon what I don’t know. My gratitude for aerosol cans of pine and lemon scents to surround gym shoes that have not left the feet in 3 years. Thank you for digital watches that eliminate a lot of teaching about which hand is before and which hand is after. Thank you for Dial-a-Prayer for the women who can’t cope until Sunday. In looking over modem technology there is possibly only one thing that you missed, a dial tone on mother’s indicating I’m busy.”
Thank you, Erma for those thoughts. Thinking about canning in the old time scene probably some of us might feel a little bit like the poet that expressed her thoughts this way.
How do I know that my youth is all spent?
Well my get up and go just got up and went.
But in spite of it all I am able to grin
When I think of where my get up has been.
Old age is golden so I’ve heard it said
But sometimes I wonder as I get into bed.
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup
My eyes on the table until I wake up.
There is sleep in my eyes I say to myself
Is there anything else I should have laid on the shelf?
I’m happy to say as I close my door
My friends are the same, perhaps even more.
The reason I know my youth is all spent
My get up and go just got up and went.
But I really don’t mind when I think with a grin
Of all the grand places my get up has been.
Sometimes perhaps we are a little hard on the youth whenever we look back and remember how things used to be. But must we be too hard. It is interesting to note that the highest of future at
Living History Farms near Des Moines is designed that the greenhouse can supply their food supply grown right there with a kitchen designed as a food processor center with a food cage
developed for storing fresh vegetables, fish ponds stocked with fish for eating and orchards, a strawberry patch and etc. It sounds as though things have gone full circle and all in our own lifetime. I do have a little trouble visional zing our children and our grandchildren picking, cooking and canning but I suppose they will be able to adjust to doing it just as many of us have adjusted to not doing it. And being thankful we didn’t have to anymore.
Helen L Marshall wrote this poem that I think is a fitting way to close this program dedicated to the constancy of change.
There’s one thing I’ve learned as older I grow
That there’s precious little I really know.
The little likes and dislikes I declare
Stubborn opinions I foolishly aired.
I’m since come to find that they’re not all so
And time and again I am forced to eat crow
With every new wrinkle and every gray hair
I find I have fewer opinions to air.
Those doors of my mind that I closed with such force
I now find myself looking on with remorse.
The things that I once vowed I never would do
I catch myself doing and liking it too.
It’s nothing for me but the mere fact of old age
Entitles a person to be fact of sage
If they only knew it those years they revere
Are not quite the pedigog they would appear?
About all they’ve taught me and I’ve lived quite a few
Is never to trust what appears to be true.