For the Love of Dirt: In the fall....

Friday, September 14, 2018

In the fall....

"Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple....."
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

When fall showed up..... On the farm....many moons ago, my mother said my grandmother would make sure all the jars of canned fruit were in neat rows in the dirt cellar.And the chicken coop was secure against the dark nights . Then she would plan her method of canning pickles.

When I was growing up, it meant going to music lessons on dark rainy nights. Hiding homework under the carpet. Eating the centres out of white bread slices and putting back the crusts.

Or stomping in mud puddles in the driving rain, trying to avoid stepping on mobs of worms squiggling about on the pavement. Always the rain.

In the fall, my grandmother liked to get a hired girl to help with setting up preserves for the winter.Rainy days would find them them chopping cabbage.

They would marvel at the 40 pounds of cabbage for 2 cents. Chop. Chop. Chop.

When I was growing up, in the fall, on those rainy days, my main worry was whether or not the t.v. would be fixed so I could watch it.Most of the times, the tv was slightly broken. Only half a screen showed. I liked to sneak into the kitchen, late, late at night and turn on "The Twilight Zone", on the broken tv, while my mother slept down the hall.

Meantime, in the fall of the 1930's my grandmother was worried about how to feed a crew of 8 plus the family, and get the fields Thrashed in time. And figure how to keep the coyotes out of the hen house.

She was thrilled, at the time, to receive help from a church in Port Haney..... Strawberry jam, 11 cans of peas, carrots and lovely apples, beets, parsnips and more cabbage.

The farm crew would eat well for weeks.

Years later, when I was growing up, my mother would make her pension money stretch far. Large pots of soup, chili, curries, home made bread, risen and baked in her mother's bread pans, and apples and cabbage and bags of root veggies kept on the covered porch through the winter. Covered from the rain and the snow.

In the 1930's, the farming crew would stay on all winter. My grandparents would feed and house them on their farm.Jobs were scarce. But they seemed to eat well.They seemed to do well.

My grandmother response to finding something to do in the fall, was to put up jars and jars of pickles. Pickles they ate with almost every meal. Pickles were the cure-all.

When I was growing up, my idea of finding something to do was to be creative. I would pretend I was my grandmother. I would mix up flour and water and beat it all together into a soup. Then promptly pour the mess into the toilet, to see what it would happen. Let's just say that we had quite a number of plumbers out to the house those fall days.......

My grandmother tells a story about one of the local farm hands chasing and catching a skunk. He was hungry enough to eat it. Unfortunately, the young man who caught it, got sick. My grandmother gave him one of her pickles to help him feel better. Said it was one of her remedies.

And as the days wind into autumn, in this time and century, they are rainy just like it always has been. Apples load the trees. I never met my grand mother, but every time I pass by her photo I wonder just how amazing she was to provide for so many all those years. And to be so strong.....