My grandmother was born in the year 1899 two weeks before the turn of the century and she was one of nine children. About two years before I was born her mother passed away. I didn’t get the chance to know her or my great grandfather, which I do not recall any one ever mentioning him, or how it was he had died.
In all the years I knew my grandmother, she never talked about her mom and dad or how it was growing up in a home with nine other siblings. Neither did my mom speak about her grandparents. It’s as if they never existed. However, I have the rocking chair that belonged to my great grandmother that says different.
With having moved into my grandmother’s home she became one of the main influencers in my life. She was a teacher of many years experience and I was a child that would learn a lot, from her. She was born of what they term the Lost Generation. They are described as having rejected the values of the generation before them. She had in her life experienced the Great Depression and I believe it is of the culture values that had been adopted in that era that resonated through her and influenced her everyday life.
From early childhood and into my teens the summers were spent with my grandmother; working with her, doing whatever it was she thought needed to be done and listening to whatever she thought needed to be said. We would visit with her sisters and brothers that lived on farms in the country. Even though we were there to visit, we were also there to work.
We would take empty bushel barrels from the trunk of the car and go into the fields and orchards to pick fruit and beans. “Gather only the fruit that is on the ground”, she would tell me, “not the fruit that is on the trees”. It was later I understood why. The fruit that was on the trees were meant for the market. As it was the farms were how her brothers earned a living. (in later years what began as local farming, turned into nation wide businesses as generations continued to farm the land, however, more recent I’ve read one is up for sale)
They had a ‘u-pick it’ policy for family, friends, and maybe even strangers, as well. In that you were free to take what ever you like that had been grown on the land, as long as it was found on the ground. With my grandmother being of the mind that a person should never waste anything, if she found that which was on the ground was still good enough to eat, then it was good enough to be canned and/or frozen for later consumption.
We began our tasks in the early hours of the morning and by late evening we returned home to the city. The course of the next few days were spent preparing the fruits and vegetables for my grandmother to blanche and/or can. The raw fruits or vegetables, she thought were best preserved by canning them, she prepped them in the pressure cooker.
Afterwards they were stored in jars, in the cabinet area that was a wall, that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Those cabinets were located behind double sliding wood doors. They were about 4ft in width and extended from ceiling to floor.
There one would find, fresh tomato and sauces, pickled cucumbers in dill or sweet, and jellies made from plums, grapes, and even crab apples. Plus a whole lot more. We use to joke that if she could figure out how to pull the kitchen sink out and put it in the pressure cooker, we’d find it later in a jar, as well. However, that has more to do with her talents, as she could can and preserve anything. Pickeled watermelon rind? You bet ch ya.
The items she blanched, green beans, purple hull peas, and corn, they were placed in freezer storage bags; later storing them in the big chest freezer that sat on our indoor back porch. The back porch also doubled as the laundry room.
Hours were spent under the mighty oaks that grew in our backyard, pealing, shucking, snapping, and hulling over huge wash tubs filled with the harvest of the day or the day before. If it was a peach I pealed it; a corn stock I shucked it; a green been I snapped it or purple hull peas, I slid my thumb down its seam popping all the peas inside out, into a bowl. Afterwards my thumb would be purple. While sore too, the purple was from the residue from prepping the purple hull peas.
And while I was busy with my tasks, so was she, busy in the kitchen, that was made hot from the pressure cooker she used to make the vegetables ready for canning. At times it would feel as if it was 100 degrees in that kitchen, but that didn’t stop her from doing what she believed needed to be done. She would sit with me too, under the mighty oaks and we would do the prep work together …
Family takes care of family and there is nothing more important in this life than family. That was Oma’s motto. In, that is what she tried real hard to instill in the three of us. To be together, to stay together and to be there for one another, no matter what.
I’m sorry Grandma, but times changed and so did we.