Reaping the Rewards of the Garden

Time to reap what we have sown, this is a good thing.

Canning time is full upon the farm in August.

Beans are cut in 1" lengths and pressure canned.
Peaches halved and canned in heavy syrup.
Corn cut off the cobs. Applesauce is made. Pears canned.
Maybe some pickles and cherries were canned too.
It is a busy time of year!

 Tomatoes are a big project calling into action the whole family.

The Old Famer's Wife cooked the tomatoes in huge pots. 

When soft they were sent outdoors to the Old Farmer and daughters

who ran them through the mill, this required a crank turner (the daughters)

and a pusher (the Old Farmer) who encouraged the tomatoes to the bottom of the mill. 

The seeds and skin came out the end of the strainer corkscrew

very dry and the sauce went into the chute.

We added a mesh strainer over the pot which caught the puree

and the juice ran through. Thus we had tomato juice for drinking

and puree for weekly spaghetti!

Halved tomatoes were also packed into the canning jars for

stewed tomatoes (for these the Old Farmer's Wife would pour boiling water over

the tomatoes to split and loosen the skins), when heated they

were seasoned with garlic, salt. pepper, butter and a tsp sugar.

Cinnamon Pears

Make a sugar syrup, pears are sweet so you may not
want too heavy a syrup. Heat with a couple cinnamon sticks
for 5 mins or so with halved pears.
Can, unless you have to eat immediately, these are really good!
Process quarts 25 mins in boiling water bath.

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The Games Children Played

Tag! Your it!

Race you to the barn,
Last one home's a rotten egg.
1 2 3 ......ready or not, here I come!

 

 These were the sounds of summer in the country.

 

Late summer evenings, hot and still;
Locusts, katydids, and cicadas loudly singing,
Then crickets starting to sing in the night.

 

This was the best time to play hide and seek.
Especially after it started turning dark and the shadows were deep.
The porch lights would go on making the shadows darker.

The Old Farmer and his wife sitting on the porch

making sure everything was safe as they relaxed

from their busy day.

One night, before the game started

a couple neighborhood boys came by. They walked up to us

on the front porch steps carrying two full grown skunks!

Us kids were fascinated, at least I knew I was.

They explained that carrying the skunks by the tail

they couldn't spray. I never knew how that ended, 

when they went to put them down!

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Driving accidents

 Bicycles were freedom in the country.

And learning to ride was a rite of passage.
And a trauma in some cases. 

  

 

Our driveway was lined with large maple trees
with the sidewalk on the opposite side. 

The Old Farmer gave the bicycle lessons.

When I old enough to stand up on the peddles of a bicycle

way too big to sit on I was given a few rides with the
Old Farmer holding the back of the seat and running alongside.

When it was determined that I  had the feel of it
I was pushed off from the step, did a few wobbles,
took off ..... and rode right up a tree!

 

Apparently that is not the first time this happened
as the Old Farmer's Older Daughter also had this same tree
jump in front of her...

Remember riding double?

 

 

I remember the Old Farmer's Older Daughter also having
a tractor driving lesson. I stood back and watched from a safe distance.
The Old Farmer took the tractor down the hill behind the barns.
Then got her up, gave a few pointers on first gear and the brake.
Then set her off across the creek, (which was a very shallow small creek).
And right up into the bushes on the other side of the path!

(She has no memory of this incident.)

 

 

 But I digress, the bicycles were hand me downs that were too big
and we had no training wheels or helmets or knee pads.

We spent the summer happily riding back and forth

to our friend's houses along a mile stretch of our country road,
usually many times back and forth. Occasionally we strayed farther afield.
 

 

 

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Pheasant in the Pines

One of the 4-H projects was planting pine trees.

They would provide a quantity of trees if you signed up

with the deal being you planted them.

The old farmer would go along a line and hit the soil with a mattock

 and the farmers daughters would follow behind planting the seedlings.

Before our time the old farmers son did this too.

  

  

I was an introspective child, I enjoyed going out alone in the woods

 and fields seeing what was there and what was new. 

I could sit for a lengthy time quietly and see the woods come to life

 after the disturbance of my appearance.  

Soon the birds would start chirping again
and the squirrels would start playing from tree to tree.

 

 I had found a cozy place to sit in an older
stand of pines that were there from the old farmer's son's time. 
It was a small open space sheltered from the outside world.
No one could see you in the middle of the grove,

 a patch of sunshine showed through.  
It was also sheltered from the wind, you could hear the wind
blowing the trees, and feel it as I sat on a lower branch

 watching and listening..  

 

 

One time a beautiful ring necked pheasant ran into the clearing

 in the pines and stopped a few feet from me. 

He shimmered in a patch of sunlight allowing me to admire him

 for a few seconds (that felt like minutes) 

before he took off (on foot) again. 

This was a gift I have never forgotten.


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Old Farmers Memories 2

When The Old Farmer was in his teens they moved to a farm in Niagara County.

Spending a Sunday in Niagara Falls in January,

he was there when a great cry went up and a loud commotion was heard.
Everyone was running down to the river.

The Steel Arch bridge had collapsed that Sunday Jan 23, 1938, at 4:20pm.

Great masses of ice often came down river and over the falls from Lake Erie

and would form an ice bridge. This year it was the bridge's undoing
and pushed out the steel supports from it's foundation.

Here's a picture of the old bridge...

 

I have pictures and postcards of the bridge laying on the ice 
but they are copyrighted, look them up on the internet!

 

 I always found the many little falls of water over the gorge interesting

in these old photos, ca1910. Is it residential drainage, or a factory area.
Now the factories are above the falls, if you ride along the Robert Moses Parkway
it is a beautiful view of the upper river on one side
and the factories all lined up on the other.

One of his stories was about going out to Pontiac Michigan

as a young man to look for work, this would have been during 

depression years.

 

Finding work did not happen for him so he headed back home in the old model t.

It was the dead of winter driving along the southern shore of Lake Erie.

The car had no heater and it was an icy cold drive.

He ran out of money and was stranded and had to ask his father to
send money, he was wired 10.00 for gas and food, and eventually made it home. 

These winter story pictures are not very colorful.
I am sure many of you have heard the old story
that Henry Ford said you could get the Model T in any
color you wanted....as long as it was black!



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