Canning Time

Canning Time was a special time, a lot of hard work and no one was too small. As I look out now and just see grass and a few flowers, I wonder how my Grandmother got all that food in this small yard. There were rows of corn and then green beans and tomato’s. Then the hill where the potato’s were put in that turned out mounds of good fried potato’s. Lettuce and onion’s, heads of cabbage and beets, it was all there. A little touch of heaven here on earth. I remember her going out and picking onions and then lettuce and frying bacon real crispy and pouring the hot grease over the lettuce and onions, even as a child I liked that. As I write I can smell the cornbread in the old cook stove. She cooked up those green beans and put potato’s in them and then boiled them again on top of the stove to seal them I guess. Of course we had to boil the jars and the lids and get them all ready first, it was a time of hard work. I did not know where kraut came from till I watched my Grandmother fix it, home made. I remember as I am writing, we used to get butter in a plastic bag from the old company store and it was white, you had to work it and squeeze it till it turned yellow, well my sister and I were just working it one day and I remember hitting her in the head with it, the bag busted and butter went everywhere, well it was the switch for both of us, but it was so funny to see her with butter in her hair, it was worth the whipping. We cut corn off of the cob for canning and sat and broke beans and de-stringed them forever. Grandma also strung beans and called then leather britches, they were hanging all up and down the side of the house so the sun could reach them. The beets were beautiful after she got through with them, they were so pretty and purple, I still don’t know how she did that. I loved the part of pulling weeds and using the hoe to dig up anything that did not belong there. What child would not like playing in the dirt? They say as we get older we think back and know for some of us those times were the best, not all of them, for us it was, the children, but for Grandma, now that was a hard working woman, she raised us by the sweat of her brow. We had I know the most beautiful garden around.

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