The Best of Times
There’s something in the air and it is by no means football fever. One would be hard pressed not to realize the pig skin season is here because that is about all that is on the television.
Just as my blog is entitled “Me Myself and Memories,” I am looking inward and remembering what I think is so special about this time of year. These most recent days have taken me back to the farm where Orlin and I spent some great years. Looking back, those memories of being a young mother are among my happiest. I was a farm wife with a farm history raising two amazingly dirty little farm kids. They sure did clean up good.
The newness of the town boy striking out for farming complete with a herd of cows began to wear off and it was now second nature that all things great and small took place right on our Boon Lake Township farmyard. Of course it was a schedule that entailed some pretty grueling work. Cleaning out calf pens and hog pens with more manure than was possible to believe represented cash when the occupants of those pens could be taken off to the sales barn in Hutchinson. No matter what it took Orlin and I took care of the farm chores twelve months out of the year making sure that the work of the tillabe acres was addressed in the correct scheme of the calendar.
Isn’t grueling work what farming is just about? We made a lot of work fun for the family.
On this farm was a wonderful little area that had been a calf pasture in times gone by. We chose to spruce up the area and make the apples trees that were in the center of the pasture the center of a large garden. We had purposely left the fence in place on three sides of the area. Carrie was a toddler when we moved onto the farm and she knew she could roam at will knowing there were soda crackers and water right under the apple trees. By the time Carrie was two and a half, there was newborn Kevin for her to peek at from time to time as he napped under the apple trees on a make shift pallet. Orlin had made a hoop with netting over it for a safe and sound place. We tried to have specified nap times for them to be tucked into their beds but that didn’t always work out with what was needed outside or in the barns. We were very flexible. As Carrie and Kevin grew it was obvious that unscheduled naps had not harmed them. They were right at our elbows out in the garden, in the barns and sometimes in the muck.
The fertilizer of the old calf pasture gave us garden produce that was just amazingly bountiful. My Mom shared fruit jars with me as her and Dad weren’t going through the same amount of canned goods as they used to with just the two of them. Orlin came home from the sales barn on several occasions with a huge cache of pint and quart jars. The first thing he always checked was to make sure the rims were not chipped so they could hold a good seal. The price was right and the fact that they needed to be hosed off outside first before being brought into the house was not a concern. We scrubbed hard as someone had cleaned out their basement that had been neglected for a long time.
When Orlin ordered an apple press we were in high cotton in one very sticky kitchen during pressing the apples and processing quarts and quarts of apple juice. Orlin had a grading process in regard to picking apples. The apples that were fairly perfect in size were set aside for the Gurney apple peeler and they would then be used in making apple sauce or apple butter. The gnarled apples went into the press — core and all. 
The mash that remained was taken out to the chickens in their pen where they really had a feast.
I don’t know if food processors were available in the mid 1960s, but we had the old wooden trough slaw cutter that had belonged to Orlin’s mother, Esther. It was about eight inches in width and three forths of the way there were a series of blades at a slight angle. An open wooden frame fit into the width of the slaw cutter and a cabbage head cut in half would be put cut side down into the frame at the end of the trough and then slide over the blades over and over for perfectly cut slaw as it fell into crock for Sauerkraut. As new farmers we were always on the end of caring and sharing people who helped us out with their hand-me-downs. We had been given a ten quart and a fifteen quart glazed crocks. As I washed the heads of cabbage and cleaned off the outer leaves, Orlin ran the slaw through the trough and Carrie and Kevin each had their wooden stompers to help pack the raw cabbage as Orlin filled them. The right amount of canning salt at intervals was added. In the dark canning cellar in the basement a large glass plate adorned the top of one of the crocks as the fermenting process began. Later it was processed into quart jars.
We were so proud of our canning cellar. All winter we ate out of it. Orlin was raised by thrifty parents just as I had been and we took what they had taught us and put it to our gain. Gunny sacks of red potatoes joined the row upon row of gleaming fruits jars.
If it could grow in our garden we canned it or froze it. Onions with the stems left on were tied and hung from the rafters. Our second crock was used to store raw carrots. With some of my earnings from the night shift working the corn huskers at the Green Giant Canning Factory in Glencoe, we bought two chest freezers from Sears and Roebuck. Corn and peas were frozen, green beans and carrots were canned. When we dug the potatoes we saved all the little ones and canned them for fried potatoes in the dead of winter. With pride when we hosted family dinners a pint jar of candied red apple rings were brought out to enjoy. From all of the poultry, beef and pork that we raised the freezers were filled to the brim.
The amazing thing is that all the processing for canning and freezing and butchering took place in a kitchen that was ten feet by twelve feet, using a gas four-burner kitchen range.
As you can tell I could go on and on as this is my season for precious memories. And at some time I know more of these times will surface as I do visit these sweet times often. How could this wonderful lifestyle not endure? Sometimes when things are almost too good to be true, it begins to look greener on the other side of the fence. Additional land was acquired to be rented, resources were extended for bigger and newer machinery and the wonderful life suffered and then it was gone. That time of my life is gone, but not so in my heart. It still remains the best of times with Orlin, Carrie and Kevin.