The First Summer:
Dad used the brush from clearing the land and built a brush fence with it. At first, he only enclosed about half an acre but by summer’s end that brush fence probably enclosed close to three acres.
One Saturday morning he left just after breakfast telling Mom that he had to see a man about a cow.
There were no livestock confinement laws back then or if there were any they weren’t enforced. A lot of hogs and cattle ran loose and Mom thought he had gone to talk to someone about them because it had been quite a job some days just keeping them out of the garden, but just before dark Dad came walking out the road leading a big red and white cow with a rope.
I can remember running to meet him and him trying to get me to take the rope and lead the cow but I was afraid to, that cow was the biggest thing I had ever seen. I finally did hold the rope though, as long as Dad kept his hand on it. Except for some chickens he had gotten a couple of weeks earlier, it was my first experience being around animals. All I knew about cows was that they gave milk and I wanted it to give us some but as I soon learned, like most everything else in life, milk is something you have to work for.
That night Dad explained to us that “Maude” the cow’s name was a young cow and hadn’t given milk yet but that she would have a baby calf in a couple of weeks and after that, she would give milk. I didn’t understand what he was talking about but it gave me something to think about and keep my eye on.
Sure enough, two or three weeks later when I went out to feed her there was something new in the pen. A little miniature red and white cow stood there, looking exactly like a miniature Maude.
Needless to say, I didn’t get any milk that day but it wasn’t long until we had more milk than we could use.
I don’t think I ever heard where Dad got that first cow but I do remember him saying that he traded his pocket watch for her.
A couple of weeks later Dad brought home a couple of cute, little black and white pigs. He brought them home in a burlap feed bag in the back of the car. As I remember it, they spent all their time either eating or squealing for something to eat.
The woods around us were full of dead Chestnut trees and Dad cut logs from them which he split into rails and used to build a pig pen. I wanted to make them pets and give them names but Dad said no, you never name any animal that you are going to eat. I just couldn’t see them as ham and bacon though.
Wild greens and berries were abundant that year and Mom started right into canning. I soon learned that berry picking could be a lot of work.
Mom had started humming little tunes as she worked and by the time the weekend evenings were warm enough to sit outside she started bringing her guitar out and playing and singing to us, something she had never done before, The first song I can remember her singing was “Cowboy Jack”. She seemed to have a fondness for country love songs. After these little concerts, we kids were put to bed and we went to sleep listening to the sounds of her still working at something, which if it was a Saturday night, usually had something to do with Sunday dinner. She never worked on Sundays except for what was necessary to prepare meals.
Dad knew where a lot of old deserted farms were located and throughout the summer we made excursions to them picking cherries and early apples. We went to one where there was a tree loaded with peaches. That was a real treat. Later in the fall, we were able to get pears and winter apples. A lot of these were wrapped in paper torn from an old catalog packed carefully in boxes and stored under the beds. Stored this way they would keep a long time and provide lots of good eating. With the bounty that we gathered from the farms and woods along with the produce from our garden mom canned over four hundred quarts of fruit and vegetables that year.
Just before the first frost, Dad dug potatoes and buried about ten bushels. To do this he dug two large holes in the garden and filled them with leaves then he put the potatoes on top of the leaves, half in each hole, then covered them with more leaves. He next covered them with the dirt from the holes making two big mounds. Around these, he dug a ditch. Then he covered the mounds with hay and using a pitchfork he gently combed downward on the hay, over this he placed a burlap feed sack with a rock tied in each corner. He said the feed sack would keep the wind from blowing the hay away and the hay would shed water and keep the potatoes dry, The leaves would keep them from freezing and the ditch would keep water that ran off the hay away from the leaves. We had potatoes to eat all winter, which Dad got out a bushel at a time by digging into the side of one of the mounds. The other one he opened in the spring and used the potatoes to plant a new crop with enough left to last us until the new ones were big enough to eat.
Onions he dug and let lay on the ground for a few days to cure, he said that if they weren’t allowed to cure before storing them they would rot. These he put in a small cellar, which he had dug just above the spring house. He also put pumpkins and rutabagas and maybe some other stuff in it. I remember that he used a shovel and buried cabbage heads by spading up a shovel full of dirt and putting the cabbage head first in the hole, then covering them over with dirt just leaving the stalk and root sticking up uncovered. He packed the dirt down by steeping on it. When we wanted one that winter we just pulled up the stalk and had a fresh cabbage head. Carrots were left in the ground to be pulled as needed, He marked the row with a long stick at each end of the row so they could be found when there was snow on the ground. Later as the carrots were pulled the stick would be moved to mark the place to start next time.
Dad liked to squirrel hunt and hunted every chance he could get that fall. He usually returned with his limit of squirrels and sometimes a grouse or rabbit and always had his pockets full of walnuts or butternuts. The nuts were dried and hidden away for mom to use when making goodies. The game was about our only meat until early winter when the pigs, which were hogs by then were transformed into, sausage, bacon, ham, and pork chops. The fat from the hogs was used to make lard and lye soap.