The garden was very large and lay to the east of the house and smokehouse. Down the center was a row of concord grapes. They were the best snack in the world – unless you ate them before they were ripe and ate too many of them. We used them to make jelly and juice and just to snack on. The entire north side of the garden was used for potatoes. We used potatoes for almost every meal. Breakfast: Fried potatoes and eggs, mush, oatmeal, bread and jelly with fresh butter and fresh from the cow milk. Lunch was a smaller version of dinner. Mother made the best meals. She fixed riveil soup, brye, and milk soup. Fried chicken, potato salad, mashed potatoes and gravy that you would die for. We planted the other vegetables in the south side of the garden – every kind of vegetable you can think of was planted. Mother fixed the best oyster plant (salsify) and okra, asparagus were all a specialty that left the mouth watering. When we dug the potatoes, we had a “grader” that we poured them through to get them sized. We sold a lot of them and the rest we stored in the cellar under the smokehouse. Smaller potatoes were used for potato salad and the larger for peeling. We would grow peanuts sometimes. We would roast them, but sometime mother would boil them in salt water, and they were really good.
Cleopha Howard says
don’t forget all the popcorn which we ate almost every day.Then there was the strawberrie Preserves along with the blackberry Jelly we got the berries from Aunt Dora and Uncle Theordore’s farm. We raised our own strawberries and gave a lot of them away to neighbors.
Aunt Lolly says
After the peanuts were harvested,(dug up and washed) they were laid on newspaper upstairs all along the hall going into our bedroom to dry. There was just a path for us to walk through. The popcorn was laid on newspapers or tarps in our bedroom to dry, with just a path to our bed. It was a wonder to behold having that wonderful food to eat anytime we wanted it. After the peanuts dried, they were put in containers, or sacks, the popcorn would be shelled and put in containers also. Daddy would always sort through the peanuts and pick out the largest ones to save for seed for the next years planting. The only time we boiled the peanuts, was right after they were harvested, The peanut shell is soft, and they can be boiled. After they dried we roasted them. good memories!!!
Lloyd Jr. says
So… How old were those grape vines when we were eating them as kids? How long do grape vines live?
Naomi Vetter says
It seems to me they were always there. The older kids would know for sure. I hope we hear from them.
Steve says
Let me be the first to congratulate our Royal fan side of the family. You have had precious little to enjoy and root for over the years, no talent, few fans, many ugly innings of baseball played mostly by players who had finished useful years with the Cardinals and went to KC before retiring… for all those painful years of simply awful baseball, let me be the first to congratulate you on a job, done. See you in the world series. SS
Aunt Lolly says
They were always there from the time that I can remember. Mahlon might know, If he would just answer.
Cleopha says
They were not always there.mother wanted them and she also wanted the rhubarb plants. They went very nice together.
Aunt Lolly says
Cleo do you remember where they got the grape vines and rhubarb plants?