I wish I had cared more about fresh and preserved vegetables in my youth. Both myself and my mother would have been a lot happier. Now I long for those meals I viewed with disdain way back when. In the summer we would have the table loaded with fresh green beans, potatoes, cucumbers, corn etc and I just ate whatever meat we might have and turned up my nose at the rest of it. And, of course, I always got treated to the "starving kids in Asia" speech as well as a reminder my older brother loved such food. I guess anything to make me feel bad. Though, I'm sure they did not see it that way.
The next thing on our menu was melons. Mother planted watermelons and cantaloupe. Cantaloupe to use was "Mush Melons". There was a large inclined area between the house and the creek she would clean off every year and make hills for her melons. Loads and loads of melons. And, I'd have to take a water bucket to the old chicken house and fill it with dried chicken manure and carry it up to fertilize the hills then take the bucket down to the creek and carry bucket load after bucket load of water to irrigate the newly planted seeds. This routine seemed to last forever to me. I was never cut out for physical labor and always hated it. I'd work just as hard playing a football or basketball game which provided not long term benefits but I hated working in the garden. Except for planting and very little eating.
Mother, on the other hand, seemed to relish all the hard work a garden took. I don't know how Dad felt about it since he was mostly off hunting so I guess he did not like garden work either. Probably considered it "woman's work". Kind of like my grandfather. Women worked in the garden. Men hunted or sat on their butt reading. :-) See? I come by it honest. :-)
When it came time to harvest most produce was canned. However, root vegetables were treated differently. With the onions when the tops became dry and brown we'd go pull them out of the ground and tie the tops up and take them to the outbuilding and hang them on nails. Potato were dumped in a bin in the cellar. I think turnips were all eaten before the need for storage arrived though I'm not sure. I can remember a few years my grandparents raised sweet potatoes and I think those were stored in the same bin as the 'regular' potatoes though I have no definite memory of that.
In the Spring were berries. My grandmother had a large raspberry patch and someone would buy a bucket or blackberries or huckleberries from some local kid who would go out and pick them. Now blackberries are much more prevalent though huckleberries are almost gone. Strip mining is the reason. Huckleberries grew on the tops of the points and ridges and strip mining took all of those. Blackberries grew almost anywhere and with all the strip mined land and all the birds "dropping" seeds soon there were blackberry vines everywhere.
Then there was one (and only one I knew of) wild strawberry patch. I'd go to it daily during the early6 Spring to make sure I got every berry as it ripened. It is not there any longer as my cousin, Skip, built a house right where it was. Not farm raised strawberry comes even close to the flavor of a wild raspberry. They were very small but packed more flavor in their small berry than the largest farm raised berry can these days.
One more note on potatoes. We used a bin in the cellar for them but others of our family had no cellar so they 'helled' their potatoes. Helling, (quite the interesting term) was done by digging a large hole and lining it with hay/straw. Then when the potatoes were dug they were dumped in the hole(s) and hay/straw layered over them and a thick layer of dirt shoveled over them. Enough to keep them from freezing in the winter. When one wanted potatoes for supper one of the kids (yeah, everyone had kids who could be tasked with it) would be sent out to dig through the dirt and take out enough potatoes for supper. Then you were careful to replace the hay before shoving the dirt back in the hole. Back then, kids were careful 'cause they knew if they let the potatoes freeze nobody was going to eat.
Next on my list is rhubarb. Rhubarb is a plant that resembles a giant celery though it has much more flavor and that flavor is sour. On a small bank in the part of the garden across from the chicken house my grandparents had several rhubarb plants. I have eaten a lot of them raw though it was more a test of stubbornness than a joy. But, my grandmother could make the best rhubarb pies. Hard to believe anything so difficult to tolerate raw could make such a great pie. And, my brother-in-law Homer, used to make a churn full of rhubarb wine. It was quite good as well.
We never had pumpkin pies and nobody I knew ever grew pumpkins. We had 'cushaw' pies. They tasted pretty much the exact same. Not sure but I think a cushaw is a kind of squash. Other than those we never grew much squash.
I'm sure I'll remember more about our gardens in time and I'll write more then.
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