Like most residents of Wallins Creek, our family grew and raised most of the food we ate. Planting and harvesting was both a joy and a toil. Our property was large enough to enable Poppy to grow plenty of fruit and vegetables, along with ample room to raise a hog or two.
A favorite was the grapevine. We didn't call it an arbor, but only a grapevine in those days. When the grapes would turn dark purple, they were at their prime for eating. We often ate them when they were green and made faces because they were sour. We would pick all the grapes at the end of the season to make jelly. I really liked eating them better than picking them. I can remember cooking the grapes until my mom determined that the jelly was ready to be poured into the jars. I'm not exactly sure how she determined this except that the consistency would change. The jelly had to get firm. Otherwise it would not be good. No one likes jelly that is runny.
One particular apple tree that sat in my back yard produced three different kinds of apples. I think it was a special tree that had been grafted together. My favorite was the large sweet green apples. They were almost like a golden delicious, but they never got yellow. The apples were very jucy. This tree would be so laden with fruit that we would have to put boards under the limbs to support the weight. I'm sad to say that this tree eventually was destroyed by a storm that split it down the middle.
One of the things that Poppy taught me that I didn't appreciate until much later was gardening. He taught me how to raise a garden. In the spring of the year he would hire someone to plow the garden. This was always with a mule-powered plowman. I don't think there were many tractors or even tillers back in those days. We had a large garden which required a lot of work. A lot of this work was required at a point in the summer when young boys would have rather been playing. There was always hoeing and weeding.
Then there was the harvesting. I remember picking corn. I learned that before you went into the corn patch, you needed to wear a longsleeve shirt with the neck button secured. This was to keep the sharp corn blades from cutting. This was like a paper cut, very painful. Also this helped to prevent getting stung by the packsaddles. This was a wooly type worm that was on the corn. This was a very painful sting.
We would usually eat almost exclusively out of the garden when the crops would begin to ripen. A typical meal would be comprised of green beans, corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, green onions, potatoes and cornbread. Sometimes we would have wilted lettuce or greens. For those of you who are not familiar with wilted lettuce, I will describe. You placed fresh garden leaf lettuce and chopped green onions in a bowel. You then fried bacon. The bacon was crumbled on the lettuce and the hot bacon grease was poured over it all. You needed to eat this hot before the grease congealed. I cringe a little today because of danger of clogged arteries. Greens are still one of my favorite vegetables. I have to beg Paula to fix them as she doesn't particularly like them. Nothing like a bowl of greens with a little vinegar poured on them.
Every meal except breakfast consisted of cornbread. My mom made the best cornbread that I ever tasted. It was consistently the same. She made it with buttermilk and white cornmeal. I don't think she ever measured anything. A pinch or this and a handful of that was her recipe. Practice makes perfect. And believe me, she got plenty of practice. It was made in a black iron skillet that was preheated. It was then baked until the crust was a perfect brown. This had to be from experience since the brown side was unseen. After eating this cornbread during the meal, it provided me with one of my favorite snacks. This was crumbled up cornbread in milk that I spooned out of a glass. My favorite container was a pint mason jar or even a clean used pint mayonaise jar. I liked this type container because it held just the right amount and provided a just right opening for spooning out the contents.
When the crops came in fully, it was time for canning. I can remember picking bushel baskets of green beans. We then spent long hours in the evening on the front porch stringing or braking beans. We would also string thread through whole beans that we would hang up to dry. These were called Shuck beans. They would later be soaked in water before cooking. I never liked these too much because they were too stringy for me. We always canned enough beans to last us, hopefully until the next crop in late spring or summer. I don't remember eating too many store-bought beans when I was a kid.
We didn't eat a whole lot of meat. If we did eat meat, it was on Sunday. It would be a frying chicken or sometimes a hen. We usually killed one of our own chickens. I still remember plucking out the feathers, then rolling up a brown paper bag, which was set on fire. We would then use the flame to singe all the small feathers off. When I got older I was sometimes tasked with doing the deed. I mean that I was told to go get a chicken and to kill it for dinner. I would catch the unlucky chicken, after which I would proceed to chop its head off with my hatchet. I would then let the chicken flop around on the ground until it stopped. This sounds pretty grisly. We didn't think of it like that. It was our way of life. It's really good now that we can have our meat and never give a thought to what took place in order to provide it for us. I don't think I could kill any animal now unless I had to. I was a hunter for years, but gave it up. I no longer had the stomach for it.
This reminds me of the Passover story in the Bible. The Jews in celebrating the Passover are required to select a lamb without blemish. They bring it into the home until the time of the Passover. In the intervening time the whole family gets attached to it. On the day of the Passover, they must kill the lamb to provide for the blood sacrifice to be used on the doorposts and lintels. This was to point them to the coming Messiah who would be the perfect lamb who would be sacrificed to provide an atonement in his blood. I have participated in the benefits of my Savior, but I shutter in the thought of the price that he had to pay.
We couldn't afford beef very often, but we raised our own pork. Thus anything in our house that didn't have feathers usually oinked. We always had one or more hogs that we raised from little pigs. I was tasked with getting slop to feed them each day. We left a bucket with some of our neighbors to collect their slop. I collected this daily along with our own scraps, which I fed to the pigs.
A big event was hog killing day. This was always a day in the fall, which was sufficiently cold in order to keep the meat from spoiling during this process. Poppy had several people that helped us. One person that I remember was John Moore. I remember that he lived near "The Big Rock." I went to school with his son David. He was an excellent butcher. Poppy would always contact him to help.
My brother Ronnie thought that John Moore was "The Sack Man." Someone had told him that the sack man would get him if he were bad. Ron thought that since he always seemed to have a sack slung over his shoulder, he must be "The Sack Man." I have no idea what he carried in the sack. Maybe it was bad little boys.
On hog killing day, we built a wood fire to heat water in a large black kettle. This would be used to soften the hair before we scraped it off with sharp knives. This may be more detail than anyone would want to know, but others will find it rekindles old memories. Hardly anything on the hog was not used. As the old saying goes, "we used everything but the squeal." We always stripped off some of the tenderloin to fry as the first meal from the hog. I also loved to see the cracklings frying in the pot over the fire. The hams would be salted and hung in the smokehouse along with the sides of bacon.
The other meats were taken to Mrs. Hatmaker's store to be ground for sausage. There they were seasoned with the just right seasonings that made it smell so good when frying and taste so good when eaten. We also rendered containers of lard to be used for cooking and frying. All the other cuts including chops and roast were processed. In those days we did not have the capacity to freeze a lot of packaged meat.
One other source of meat was from wild game. Even though no one in our family was a hunter, we sometimes were given wild game. This was mostly a squirrel or a rabbit. I remember trying racoon also. I didn't like this much. I couldn't get over the feeling that I was eating a dog. Well it was from the general family as I learned in school. But in the end, we ate most anything that was available. Our family would try most anything. We didn't have the luxury to be choosy. To this day my motto is, if you are thirsty, you will drink muddy water.
