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.
garden
Photo Friday: The Garden
Here are two more photos from the ones that Aunt Cleo sent in. The caption on the back says, “The garden and grape row”.
The caption on the back of this next one read, “Farm at Henley – the garden and house” in what looks to all the word to me like my dad’s handwriting. Under that in a different script and pen it reads, “left to right: corn, cabbage, potatoes, strawberries, grapes, corn”. The front of the picture has “AUG 75” printed on the edge, which I assume is the date it was developed.
What differences do you notice between the pictures?
Taking care of Vernon… by Uncle Felix
We need more stories about Uncle Vernon
One day Mom was working in the garden. She told me to take care of Vernon. Vernon wanted in the garden to eat some tails(carrots). I held the gate closed and he started crying. Then he got mad and said, “It’s a hell of a mess you made me cry!”