Throw Back Day Every Day Here

I'm a fan of Good Morning America so today I'm watching as they discussed Throw Back Thursday. The topic was how much the set had changed from thirty years ago. It occurred to me that I just posted a picture on Facebook that might fit in a Throw Back Era except it's from last week. The picture is my husband, Harold, mowing hay in our acre and a half hayfield. Let me make myself clear. I don't consider him the throw back. Just the hay making equipment. The machinery he uses works for our small hayfield. He often recalls sixty years ago in Arkansas when he ran the dump rake for his grandfather. He was small and the lever to release the hay clump was hard to tromp on so Harold had to stand up and use both feet to release the hay. He considers the equipment he uses today much easier than what he remembered as a kid.

Most of what we do around our acreage might seem like a throw back from another era. A while back I put another picture of my cherry pitter on Facebook. There are newer pitters on the market, but I didn't know that when I found the pitter in an antique store. Before I bought it I spent hours pitting the cherries by hand. Even then it took me a year to decide the pitter was worth $20. We were visiting my Aunt Bonnie near Cabool, Missouri when I first saw the pitter in a small country shop. I backed off. It had been a few months since I pitted the cherries in the spring. Guess my memory was short. The next spring, we had a large crop of cherries again. All the time, I pitted I imagined that pitter laying idle on a shelf hundreds of miles away. So on our annual visit to the Ozarks my aunt said where would I like to go. First stop I wanted to make was that antique store. Aunt Bonnie reminded me it had been a year. The pitter was probably gone. She wasn't about to dash my hopes. Oh, please, can we go look? I have to know for sure. We entered into the rather dark shop interior, and my aunt said, "Okay, where do you think the pitter was?" "I know exactly," I said and walked right to it. I grabbed it, paid for it and laid it in the closet until the next spring. Harold set the table up out in the yard, and the ripe berries squirted on me, the table and the ground. Hey, I was happy. I saved so much time with my throw back pitter.

We've lived on this acreage for almost twenty five years. When we moved in, we planted all kinds of fruit trees. The advantage to having our own place had been to raise all the food we could eat and then some. For two recent springs, a freeze killed any chance of having fruit. This year we are blessed with crops. That means if I don't want any of the fruit to go to waste I must freeze or can the excess so we can enjoy eating our apples, pears, cherries, plums, and peaches during the winter. Forget about the peaches. We only had ten on our very old tree so I made a pie. That will be gone very soon. Two small peach trees are growing fast so my hope is for a good crop of peaches in a year or two. Plus, I saved the peach seeds to start another tree.

The plum tree has lost several limbs lately so the plums are up high. I used the apple picker to reach what I could. To make preserving plum sauce quick, I've cooked the plums whole. Next I wait for them to cool and take out all the seeds by hand so I can put the plums in the blender and make sauce out of them. I've canned a six pints. Not as many as other years, and I worry the tree won't be alive much longer so I saved seeds to plant. The tree came from an older tree in town near my brother-in-law's garden. I suppose the variety is damsel. I know I like the size and flavor of this plum so want to keep from losing it.

A few days ago I canned pears. We've heard that fruit isn't ripening as fast this year because of the dry weather. I picked the pears on lower branches that were about to touch the ground. It took a week for them to soften in the house. Since that worked, I had Harold pick more. I'm waiting for them to ripen. The pears left on the tree seem to be growing yet. I like the idea of larger pears to eat fresh. By the time we eat the two quarts I put in the refrigerator, a pint in Jell-O, the bowl full on the table and the pie that is now gone, I will be ready to can most of the rest.

I wonder how many women in this area preserve their food or have a large garden and orchard like we do. It happens to be in my DNA as they say these days. My earliest memories in the fifties are of my mother with her pressure cooker hissing on the wood cookstove in Missouri. Hot humid days made for miserable work with no air conditioning and not even a fan. The house stayed hot forever after canning season began. Jars filled with vegetables, fruit and meat replaced the empty ones in the root cellar. We had a top notch root cellar, cool and sometimes a black snake's retreat in the summer heat, but the safest place to be during tornado season.

Before pressure cookers were cold packers. I still use one of those, too. Back in my grandmother's day, the cold packer took hours to preserve vegetables and meat, but the wood cookstove was on all day anyway. Grandma Bright had nine children so she kept a large pot of beans or stew simmering all the time. Before cold packers, women put a zinc lid with a rubber seal on the blue jars. They probably thought to smell the food when they opened the jars to make sure it smell safe to eat. Rule of thumb was boil any canned food hard for fifteen minutes. Between poorly processed canned food and leaving left overs on the table from one meal to the next because there wasn't refrigeration, food poisoning happened often. It was sometime in the forties before canning flats and rings became popular in our area.

My filled jars go on shelves in our basement. A couple years ago, we had our hot water heater replaced. The repairmen were amazed at the amount of food I had preserved. In the winter, I don't have a very large grocery list. No need to get out on a snowy or frigid day. Between, my freezers, my basement shelves and my bread maker we can hibernate. My food preservation is a source of accomplishment made easier by having air conditioning. This is our second year with a cool house during a very hot week. Once upon a time, I froze vegetables in the blanched stage and thawed them out to can in the fall.

Today I've canned four quarts of downfall apples. The tree is loaded, but not as ready as I'd like them and the downfalls don't seem to ripen like the pears did. I've always been interested in older recipes so I kept one for apples probably from a Capper's. Most of my older recipes came from relatives or older canning books. This Canned Pie Apple recipe can be used to put in Jell-O, too.


Canned Pie Apple

1 quart of sliced apples

¼ cup sugar

Using the above ratio, fill a large nearly air tight container with apples. Mix the sugar slightly into the apples with each quart added. When the container is filled and packed down add the cover and let stand on the counter overnight. In the morning, pack the apple slices into jars and seal. Remember to pack the apples down in the jar to avoid a lot of shrinkage.

Cold pack in water no longer than 10 minutes after the water comes to a hard boil. Apples will stay very white. Treat as fresh apples for a crisp or pie.

Bullock Family garden near Schell City, Missouri from 1948 - 1961 in the fall when the weeds had taken over. All the vegetables were in the root cellar by then in jars.

Is This How A Squirrel Feels In Fall

Is This How A Squirrel Feels

Have you noticed when the temperatures began to feel like fall, the squirrels stopped chasing each other and started their search for food to bury for the winter?

I get the same urge though I don't bury food. I've seen how forgetful the squirrels are when it comes to finding their food supply. In the spring, their acorns and walnuts sprout in my flowers. I would be just like the squirrels if I tried that except my tomatoes or cucumbers wouldn't come up in the spring to remind me where to look. The safest place for what Harold brings in from the garden is going into jars stored in our basement or baggies in our freezer. That way the food supply is centrally located for me to get at when the ground is snow covered. Perhaps, that is a suggestions the squirrels should try. Pick one spot, dig down and bury all the nuts there to make it easy to find. The idea works for me. I wouldn't have so many tree sprouts to pull up in the spring.

We are fortunate to be able to raise our food. Gardening is good exercise and a safe way to have healthy food. We have a large garden, but there are times we wonder if it's going to hold all that we want to plant. We like a variety of vegetables so we plant our spring garden as early as possible, and when that has finished producing, we start over with a fall garden. Just like last year, we're now carrying water to the plants. Our new lettuce, radishes and carrots are up and growing, but some of the other veggies have yet to sprout. The seeds are dormant under the soil. What we need is a good soaking rain and soon.

Picture is of radish rows in what was the potato patch. Wire rolls are old fencing I use to discourage the chickens from scratching my plants out of the ground. I've tried so many recycling ideas to get rid of varmits in the corn patch and berries that one of our neighbors says our garden looks like a land fill. Beyond the radishes is the strawberry bed.
Preserving all the good foods to eat this winter really limits my time on the computer. I'd like to spend more time working on a new Amish story right now, but I console myself with this winter when I'm making lunch with quick to cook dishes from the freezer or jar, I'll be writing more.



Right now my writing project is a special one. If you remember I just finished publishing a book written by a cousin about his time spent in the Vietnam War - 199th Light Infantry Brigade Redcatcher M.P. Now I'm soon going to publish another book for a dear sister-in-law that lost her battle with cancer recently at age 60.



The two of us started out in the late eighties thinking we would like to write a book. I signed up for a six weeks summer writing course in the back of the library. That was a very helpful course and fueled my fire to some day be an author. The next summer the course was offered and both of us signed up. There was only a class or two before the classes were canceled. We were on our own again, and life seemed to get in the way. After that, our conversations weren't on a possible book. Though I kept working on my skills every time I had a spare moment, the sister-in-law didn't. Her possible book was placed in a metal box for safe keeping until she had the time to finish it. She didn't get the chance. The metal box surfaced recently and brought back memories of our bright hopes to be authors.



So now I'm going to make her dreams come true by publishing her book. The story is a romance. It needs much work and an ending which I've already figured out. So the day will come when I'll be able to share the book with the author's name on the cover. What a special legacy for her to leave her children and grandchildren. This woman lived her life with courage. She embraced her life with humor and bravery in the last fourteen years all the way to the end. She enjoyed the few remaining years and then months and days she had left and always kept in mind ways to make it easier for her loved ones to live life with her and without her. We were sisters with a common dream. If the situation was reversed, she'd have done the same for me.



Now time to get busy again. On my list of to do today, as a reminder that this is still summer, is making homemade ice cream from an aunt's recipe.



Pudding flavored Ice Cream



4 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 small bowl of Cool Whip

2 3oz. boxes of instant pudding or one large (any flavor) We love Butter Pecan. Doesn't come on the grocery store shelf anymore, but can be found in bulk in many of the Amish stores. I buy a supply just for ice cream.

½ gal. cold milk. (I've been using Silky soybean milk.)

1 tsp flavoring to match pudding or use vanilla. Can even omit since the pudding makes the ice cream's flavor.



Beat eggs in large bowl. Add sugar and pudding. Beat thoroughly. Stir in cool whip and flavoring. Pour in freezer can and add milk to the fill line. Freeze.

Summer Fun In The Country

Summer is showing off its best in Iowa right now. Pleasant temperatures, warm not real hot, during the day and cool at night. This makes for a perfect time to have company come enjoy our country place. My husband keeps the area mowed like a park. The lawn chairs are in the ash tree's shade. My flowers are blooming bouquets of red, pink, purple and white. The multitude of cats laze about in the sunny driveway or hide for a nap in the butternut tree or the grapevine, seeking shade and solitude. The goats wander back and forth from the cool darkness of the barn to the tree groves or pasture to graze. The free range chickens are busy scratching in all the wrong places, the garden and my flower beds. The two red and black roosters proudly crow and strut around their domain until they find some eatable morsel, an ant hill, hidden small black beetles, Japanese beetles or the biggest ripe tomato in the patch. That excites the roosters into a clucking tune that calls the hens to come to dinner.

All this activity that we take for granted is a natural wonder to our city relatives, especially the children. My husband's niece reminded me about when she and her cousins were small they each used to spend a week with us in the summer. Our son had a different playmate every week for most of the summer and his cousins got a taste of country life, because I put them to work doing chores. That's what made for wonderful memories for this niece. She wanted her children to experience a taste of that. So one day this week four generations, my husband's mother, his sister, her daughter and two children, came for the day. My husband grilled brats and hot dogs to go along with the rest of the meal. I made sure to have everything prepared before they got here including my strawberry freezer dessert which cuts like cake and reminds me of ice cream with a crumb topping.

We ate lunch right away so the tour began as soon as possible. My husband is in charge of tours. I take pictures. We're raising six turkeys this year so they were a new sight. Also new was the birth of eight chicks in the hay loft which was a total surprise, but one we expected since it always happens to us in late summer. There is always a hen or two that out smarts my husband with a well concealed hiding place. We set three hens on purpose in early summer, and they hatched twenty chicks which we thought was enough for this season. My husband gave all the chicks to one hen. I told the children she was like the old woman in the shoe who had so many children she didn't know what to do. At that time, the temperature was cool day and night. Most days were rainy. Mother hen had to worry about fluffing out her feathers enough to cover so many babies. As the offspring grew covering them became impossible so some of them roosted on the hen's back for warmth. What was even more vexing to the hen was when the chicks began to wander away from her to explore on their own. She clucked sharply, but that never did work. They ignored her so she'd wind up running after them to gather the chicks back into the brood, forcing the remaining chicks to keep up. Since the chicken room is in the barn loft, we hear the loud tromping overhead and all those tiny feet sound like a herd of elephants.

The children and their mother made a quick trip to the rabbit room. Nothing very exciting there. A black and white buck and doe sat at the back of the cage. One white doe hid in her nesting box, and no babies to report yet this summer. Since the rabbits are my husband's project I don't ask for an explanation. You see all of the above had been my domain for many years while my husband worked. He took over what we call chores several years ago. Though I still do the vet work, the rest of the time I stay away from the barn as much as possible. I tell him I'm retired.

 The doe goats are very friendly this year as long as the kids stayed on the outside of the pen. They came to smell hands extended through the gate in case the children had something good to eat and remained long enough to be petted. Once in awhile, they took a nibble of a shirt sleeve. In another pen, the smaller buck

goats circled around out of reach except for one. When he's called he still holds out hopes of getting a bottle. Most of the time I consider him a pest when he's underfoot like a dog or pressing his head against my leg to get my attention, but this once, I was glad he came for the children's attention.

Last was the tour of the garden and flowers which was given for Harold's ninety two year old mother benefit. She has always been a lover of all plants. She still has a large garden and appreciates the effort that goes into a well weeded and productive garden. Now our fall crop of veggies, radishes, lettuce, spinach and peas, can be seen in the rows hidden among the spring crops that are producing so well. Harold's mother has made it her goal through life to try to get as many different varieties of flowers as she can, and from my inexperienced viewpoint, I'd say she succeeded. I know I can always go to her for advice on flower plant care so it's always fun to show her my efforts.

That was the last of the tour as far as the grownups were concerned. We were ready for a break, but the children kept exploring.

The kitten napping in the butternut tree is tame when he wants to be. Lizzy and her grandmother petted him until he decided he'd had enough of these strangers. He jumped down, thinking he'd escape to the barn. Lizzy followed, convinced the kitten she was as friendly as Uncle Harold and carried him around for awhile. Her love of animals has her thinking that she'd like to be a veterinarian. Her mother says she should be at our barn on the days I am doctoring the animals. Her mind might change. I wouldn't bet on her mind set changing as far as loving animals goes, but she does have plenty of time yet to come up with what she wants to do as a profession. In the meantime, it never hurts to have this one option. I love animals. Maybe I and my husband contributed to Lizzy's passion for animals. At least, we've given her good childhood memories to look back on when she's grown just like her mother.