BAKING BREAD/ROLLS-BAKING IN GENERAL!

We went to the dentist today and Grandpa's growth turned out to be benign.

I wanted to tell you about how my parents preserved root veggies. My dad would dig a hole big enough to bury the veggies. He would put straw at the bottom and then the veggies and then straw over all of it. We could get turnips, carrots, parsnips, etc along time after harvest by just digging and removing some of the straw. This kept them from freezing. Also, earlier I had mentioned my dad would get a truck load of peaches from Southern Illinois. My mother would put up about 9 bushels, but the rest would be for the neighbors peach supply. The pineapples my mother canned were produce that was purchased.

My mother would start early in the morning before we left for school to make her dough for bread/rolls. She made about 6 loaves to one pan. The pans she used to make rolls and bread just fit perfectly in the oven. This bread would be coming out of the oven just about when we would get home from school. We would run all the way home, knowing that it was baking bread/roll day. She always saved starter yeast over from each bread making and used the potato water for her liquid in the bread. The cinnamon rolls and carmel rolls were absolutely heavenly when we would get home from school. I don't remember ever buying bread during the 30's. Now homemade breads are a luxury, but then it was the norm.

She would make beautiful angel food cakes and save the yolks to make noodles. Sour cream chocolate cake, pan cookies, oatmeal cookies, jelly rolls were just a few of the homemade goodies that came out of the oven.

Pies of all kinds were made and real lard was used for the pie crusts. My favorite pie was sour cream apple pie. I have never found a recipe that tasted like her pie (and I have looked for it often) . Now this pie was one to write home about that she made on a regular basis. Others were Raspberry, gooseberry, apple, peach were made often. Since we had plenty of milk, eggs and cream she would make custard pie a lot.

You wonder how we could consume all of this food. What you might not know, but dad hired men to help him farm more than 400 acres (I think it was 460 acres of land). This was before he purchased tractors and farmed the land with horses. So my mother had hired hands to feed as well as her own family.

Popcorn was grown and we popped corn a lot for snacks. Fudge was made and real black walnuts were put in it.

Wisdom for the day--John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, "I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

CANNING AND PRESERVING FOOD YEARS AGO!!

I forgot to mention that we had lots and lots of tomato plants, for the purpose of canning tomato juice, tomatoes, ketchup, perserves, etc. Also, we had pear trees that my mother canned/or wrapped in paper to ripen.

She prided herself in her canned goods lined up in our cellar for the entire winter. We wanted for nothing. The supply that she canned lasted us all winter, until the new supply would ready.

Each day was a canning day during the summer months. What was canned was what was in the gardens to preserve. Jars had to be washed, sterilized, and produce had to be picked, washed, stemed, shelled or what ever needed to be done. She would put the food in the jars and place them in a hot water bath until the proper time of cooking. The woodburning cookstove was roaring all summer long, because there were a lot of produce to can.

These are the produce that I know was canned each year--Corn, beets, tomatoes, tomato juice,
grape juice, pickles (all kinds-dill, bread & butter, sweet, relishes), peas, green beans, mixed vegetables for soup, pears, peaches (9 bushels), apples, cherries, pineapple, pepper relish, all kinds of jellies (raspberry, grape, crabapple, apple, peach) were made. She canned beef that was just out of this world in taste.

Cabbage was put up and made into kraut and then put into cans as well. Lots of kraut was made.

She would put this in large crocks with salt and let it ferment. A washed large rock would hold the kraut down under the brine until processed.

On another day, I will tell you about our root vegetables that were preserved.

When I think back of the work that my mother put in to do all of this, without complaining, I just am amazed. (more about her attitude at a later time). We lacked for nothing in the food line on our table.

I am so grateful for all that God has supplied in the form of food for our human race. (All colors, textures and tastes) What a creator!!!

Wisdom for the day--Proverbs 6:6-8 "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."

Proverbs 30:25 "The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer"

GARDENING WHEN I WAS GROWING UP!

Well we really had quite the produce growing during my growing up years. We had 3 gardens and they each were huge.

Potato garden--We grew enough potatoes to last us the entire year and had a potato bin in our cellar. We grew enough to have seed potatoes for the next year to plant, also. Sweet potatoes were grown along with white potatoes.

Our truck patch--We had a huge truck patch and grew cucumbers, muskmelons, squash, sweet corn, watermelon.

Our regular garden close to the house--We grew the following in it--Asparagus, gooseberries, strawberries, lettuce, radishes, winter and green onions, peas, green beans, parsnips, turnips, cabbage, spinach, rhubarb. I might have missed something, but you get the jest. Now these were planted in abundance, because my mother was determined that her family was not going to want for something to eat. These were the depression years and she canned everything she could get her hands on for the winter months. I will talk about canning at another time. My mother, as a child, nearly starved to death when her parents homesteaded in Nebraska. She never forgot this, and vowed it would not be the case with her own family. More about this later. She told my dad that she would can anything he brought home from town that was a good buy. He would drive to southern Illinois and bring back a truck load of peaches.

We picked raspberries along the hedge rows every other day. These were made into pies, jams and cobblers. Yum!!!

We had peach trees, apple trees, black walnut trees, crab apple trees and a grape harbor.

My grandparents had cherry trees and we would help pick the cherries.

Our home had yellow, pink and red roses, lilac bush, peonias, zinnas, holllyhock flowers to hide the outhouse.

This all involved in teamwork to hoe, weed, pick, clean the produce once it got to the house. Peas to hull, lettuce to look (for bugs,etc), green beans to stem was just daily chores to be done. Then there was canning. I will write about canning at another time.

These gardens were our groceries all during my growing up years. Many of these years were the height of the depression (1930---1940). We did not lack for food. My husband told about that for soup they had only milk soup. We had oddles of veggies in our soup. However, his mother had a garden and made the dollar stretch farther than anybody I know. You can see that we were rich in comparison of people that lived in the city and had to stand in soup lines.

There was plenty of work to do and we all pitched in and did it. The only way to get all this done was the secret ingredient. TEAMWORK!!!!!!

Todays wisdom--Stories from the past can give us pointers for the present.

WATER SOURCE AND BATHROOM???

No we did not have running water in the our house, but we did run to get it from the well outside. It was a windmill and later there was a power motor attached to it to pump water. The pump had to be primed to bring the water up from the well.

We had very hard water and it wouldn't cook beans, so whenever our family wanted to cook a pot of beans (Winter wash-day meal) we had to go to our neighbors to the East of us and get some of their water which happened to be softer (different well source). When there were a lot of chickens to clean or /vegetables to clean we carried bucket after bucket of water into the house. (This was usually was my job) However, my mother would warn me not to carry only a half a bucket at a time because of health problems that develop with girls lifting too much. This was preventive medicine so we wouldn't get her health problems. (a fallen bladder)

We did have a wash room and it had a pump that pumped water from our cistern. It was water that collected after rains. We had to prime that pump to bring up water so we could get soft water to wash with or do laundry. Everyday we had to keep the reservoir on the cookstove filled so we would have hot water to wash our face, etc. The cookstove kept the water hot at all times.
This water wasn't pure to drink. It was so soft that washing ones hair or clothes was made easier to do.

We had no plumbing or bathtub or stool. Our bathroom was a path leading out to the outhouse.
This was a mighty cold trip in the winter and one didn't stay too long. We didn't use toilet paper but the Sears Roebuck Catalog. We did have a large pot to go inside for nighttime use. This had to be taken out daily to the outhouse and dumped and cleaned out. I do remember getting chased by a rooster on the way to the outhouse. I was barefooted and this rooster thought my toes were worms. I was quite afraid of that bird!!!

Bathtime was around the old woodburning stove. I was the first to get a bath in the galvanized tub and then my sister and brother got their bath. I was the youngest and went to bed earlier. I still remember this ritual.

How grateful that we have a bathroom with running water and plumbing now. PTL

Wisdom for the day--Jesus said "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thrist; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:14

SOURCE OF LIGHT WITHOUT ELECTRICITY!

Grandpa and I took 40 containers of lawn waste to the dump today. It took us all morning to load and unload it all. Now we just wait until the back tree has dropped its leaves.

The source of light when growing up (before electricity) were keresene lamps. They were a far cry from giving off much light. We did have an aladdin lamp which had little bags hanging down and when we used that lamp, it was much better. It was kinda spooky to go in a room that wasn't lit up. There seems to be a lot of shadows. When you had to go outside to the barn, etc after dark, one had to take a lantern with them. This wasn't all that great either.

My grandfather didn't know why we got electricity and thought he could read quite well with the old keresene lamps. One day when he came down to visit, we had the lights on and he was reading and then we lit a lamp and turned off the light. He was absolutely amazed at the difference. It didn't take him long to hook up to the the modern way of lighting the room.

Our modern way, was not very fancy, however. There was a light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the room and a string to turn it on. We were grateful for the new invention and couldn't imagine what it would lead to in what we consider our necessities of today.

Wisdom today--John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

ELECTRICITY WHEN I WAS A CHILD!

We didn't have it. We got it when I was in 8th grade. My sister said that we didn't have it at all while she was at home, so it was when I was in the 8th grade.

The first appliance we purchased was a refrigerator. What utter joy!!!! We could not refrigerate any left over food and the only means of keeping it cooler was place things in a crock in the water trough by the pump. Water went through the trough to fill the tanks across the road and by the barn. The trough was housed in a tiny building built to hold the trough. Radio was run by battery and we had to conserve on that, because our battery would run down. No electric iron, stove, sweeper or anything like that. When we got electricity and got a refrigerator we made ice cream almost on a daily basis using a powdered mix. Then you had to stir it while it was freezing. We thought we were really living it up!!!

CENTRAL AIR?????

Since yesterday I wrote about Central Heating, I thought today I will write about our "central air" when I was growing up.

We did not have electricity until I was in 7th or 8th grade, so you know there was no central air, unless you took in consideration that wind might blow between the cracks of the windows/house.
I don't think our house was insulated very much, if any, and during the summer months the wood/burning cook stove was always fired up. My mother canned and cooked up a storm during these summer months. You can imagine the heat that this created. And to top it all off, she closed the windows when she got her canned produce out of the boiling canner, so that any breeze would not break the glass containers. After working so hard to can the produce, she didn't want to chance a breakage.

I will write another day about canning more in detail. During the summer, many times we would sleep by the door to get a wisp of breeze. In the 30's the summers were extremely hot, land parched, and without insulation and the cook stove roaring to provide meals for the family, you can imagine the heat that built up in the house. Sometimes, we would even take our mattress outside to get a breathe of air so we could sleep.

When we talk about the "good ole days", we have to take this in consideration. Many things during these years were good, because we learned "VALUES". Something that seems to be in short supply in todays society. We learned that hard work and how to improvise and make do and not expect others to do what we can do for ourselves.

I am so thankful that we have an air conditioned home. However, we were happy with what we had, as others weren't quite so fortunate in the depression years.

Wisdom for the day--Plan as though you'll be living for a century; live as though you'll be leaving today.

CENTRAL HEATING?????

Oh yeh--Our heating consisted of a wood/coal burning cookstove in the kitchen and a wood/coal burning stove in the family area. The kind that you froze on the backside and burned up in the frontside. At night dad would try to stoke the stove a little so he wouldn't have to start from scratch in the morning. By morning there would be very little embers left and we were tucked under a pile of wool comforters and did not want to get out of bed. My sister and I did have a room directly above the stove with a vent to our room. If we waited long enough some of the heat would filter upstairs. Then we would get dressed in the morning standing over the vent. During the night we would have frost on our covers. We really roughed it, but to this day I love camping (which we don't do anymore because of the work involved).

I have fond memories of dad slinging me over his shoulder and tucking me into bed upstairs. He would always take me to the mirror and let me look at myself and off to bed I would go hanging like a gunnysack up to bed.

correction from yesterday--My sister said that my mother did have a miscarriage right after she had gotten caught in the washing machine belt, but the baby would have been still born because the baby had been dead for quite awhile prior to this event.

Thoughts on Wisdom--"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6 KJV

WASH DAY YEARS AGO!

I will try to tell you about what it was like years ago on wash day. My mother would put on a huge copper boiler (I told you the size yesterday) on the coal burning cookstove. The water was brought up to boiling and then transferred to a wringer washing machine that was put in the kitchen. Two huge galvanized rinse tubs were used to rinse the water. These had to be pumped from our cistern water. Once the water was all hot and rinse water was poured in the tubs, the wringer washing machine was ready to use. Of course, starch had to be made for the cotton clothes and blueing balls was put in a little bag, to make the white clothes, whiter. Then the homemade soap was melted with water on the stove and poured into the washing machine.

The clothes had to be sorted according to whites, colored and farm work clothes. After the clothes were washed and rinsed, a trip to the clothes line was made. The line had to be washed off, so the clothes wouldn't get soiled. Clothes were hung by clothes pins. One always had to watch out for rain during drying time on the clothes line. If it looked like rain, we had to go out and get the clothes off the line before they were completely dried and then hang them up again.

Another thing we had to consider was the winds direction. If the wind was blowing from the road, we were in trouble because of dust would get on the wet clothes when people drove by. Our road wasn't traveled all that much so we were probably OK most of the time. After they were dry, we had to go out and fold the clothes and put them into the basket for the return trip to the house.

Now on winter days or freezing days, the clothes would freeze outside and not dry, so we hung them in behind our woodburning stove in the family room on racks. These racks would not hold all the clothes, so we strung lines from one end of the room to the other end to hold the rest of the clothes. Until the clothes were dried, we duck underneath of the clothes when we were in our main living quarters.

All the moisture in the air in the house probably kept us from getting colds in our chest. In summer (before electricity) my mother would do her laundry in a washhouse with a powered driven motor and belt to turn the clothes in the machine.

My mother, before any of us were born, was pregnant with her first child and she was doing the laundry and got her clothes caught in the belt from the motor and it tightened up around her and she had a miscarriage later in her pregnancy. I learned this out just this year. I knew my mother miscarried a child, but didn't know the cause of the miscarriage. My dad wasn't too far away, and came to her rescue or it could have been even worse.

Well, after all the clothes were washed and hung outside to dry, it was pure delight to sleep with sheets that were dried outdoors. If you ever slept between fresh air dried sheets, you would never forget it. Almost all of the clothes were sprinkled and ironed before putting away.

What I remember and liked most about laundry day, was that my mother would make stew for dinner. It would consist of whole potatoes, carrots, turnips and any other vegetable that was growing in the garden. This was cooked with stew meat and today is still my favorite meal of by gone years.

Wisdom of the day--People will be judged by the way God sees them not by the way we see them.

HOMEMADE SOAP!

Well today we are going over and get a growth off of grandpa's tongue. I really don't think it is much to worry about, but the dentist sent him to a specialist and today is the day. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well, since I told you that I would let you know how laundry soap was made years ago, I will try to explain. On butchering day, they would take the fat and render it and get lots and lots of grease. This grease was turned into laundry soap.

The kind that seemed to stick in my mind was the no cook variety. My mother would take the grease and add lye to it and stir it up for a given period of time. I think she added borax and water but don't know what else.

Then this potion would be let set for awhile (a week or so). The top of it would be white soap and the bottom would be kinda brown juice. The brown juice would be thrown away and the white part would be cut into bars and set out to dry. When dried, the soap would be added to the hot water that was taken from a copper oval container or boiler (size-2 ft X 1 1/2 ft X 1 1/2 ft) and it would be our laundry soap.

Believe me, it was really a good soap and got the clothes gleaming white. In those days, everyone put out their clothes on the line outside and prided themselves in their white clothes. My husband's mother was one that the neighborhood always said had the whitest clothes they had ever seen. She used homemade soap. I do remember sometimes they made another variety and it was cooked. I believe this kind was made very close to the butchering day and it was made in large black kettles. This soap was usually more brownish in color. I'm sure lye was used in this soap, also. Oh my, am I glad we can go to the grocery store and purchase our laundry soap, without going through all of this. I will tell you more about wash day at another time. It was an all day process!!!!

Words of wisdom for the day "Those who let God provide will always be satisfied".

HOMEMADE BUTTER!!

I thought it might be a "fun" thing to pick out a subject from my youth and tell about it on the blog. For instance--Making homemade butter. We today just go the grocery store and purchase our butter and don't think about what went into the process of it origin. I remember I was churning butter in a small churn (I still have this churn) when I was 5 years old.

Why I remember this so well is that it was storming outside and we were all in the family room around the stove. Dad was repairing some harness and I was churning this butter. All of a sudden, a crash so loud that it bolted us to attention. We looked out and dad said, "our barn is on fire!"

When he investigated it, it was the straw stack right behind the barn that was on fire. Our neighbor to the East of our home said she was at the kitchen window and saw a large ball of fire roll across the field and struck the strawstack. Dad had just gotten the horses in the barn, that was huddled around the strawstack, otherside they would have been killed.

Well to get back to the butter making. You first had to milk the cow (I never did this), then you brought it into the house and seperated the milk. This machine was called a seperator. You poured the milk in the container above and you turned the handle to build up speed to seperate the milk from the cream. After this, came the washing of the machine, and it had so many parts to it and it had to be torn apart to clean each part. There were 2 spouts coming from the machine. One spout for the skim milk and the other was PURE CREAM.

After you had enough cream you put it in a churn . We had a huge churn (about foot 1/2 wide X 1 1/2 deep) and the other was a hand churn I was using the day the straw stack caught fire.
After you turned the handle on the churn the cream seperated into chunks of butter and buttermilk (whey from the cream). Then you would take this out and wash the butter so there wasn't any buttermilk on the butter, salt it and put it in a mold. There you had it!!! Homemade butter!!! Boy did that taste good on toast. I will try to tell you at another time, more of what it was like when I was a child.

The wisdom for the day is--We influence future generations by living for Christ today.

LEAVES, LEAVES, EVERYWHERE!

Yes, we have been bundling up leaves from our front tree for the past couple weeks. Wish they were dollar bills so that we could help with the deficit that the government is putting us all in. We do have a nifty way of getting them up, however. Our tractor goes around picking them all up and putting them in the bins in back. We just empty the bins into bags and then take them to the dump. A lot easier than we used to have to do them. Our front tree is about 90 per cent down. Then we wait a few weeks and we start the process over in the back yard. At least they don't fall all at once.

We went over to see our "cutie" great grandson who is 10 months old. How precious can one little guy get!!!

The wisdom for the day is--"Only one life, 'twill soon be past' only what's done or Christ will last". This saying was on the wall when I was growing up and it still is true.

EXHAUSTED BEFORE STARTING!

Here it is Thursday already. I can't believe the time flies so fast. Of course, when you are as old as I am, It takes me twice as long to do 1/2 as much work and I am 2 to 3 times more tired. So you can see time seems to slip away. This morning I got busy making a air condition cover (top) to our central air. The one I had was so bad that it was unusable. I knew I had a scrap of vynl and thought I could make it work. I did and I did make it work and I used shoestrings to tie it on so it wouldn't blow off. I thought about how this was a way of life when I was growing up--(Making do with what you happen to have on hand). The way the economy is going, I think we are headed for those times again and I wouldn't be surprised if they might even be worse. I hope not and I don't want to sound like doom and gloom so I will get off of that subject. I think of the scripture II Timothy 1:12b "For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed "unto him against that day". So this is a great promise when times look not too good. There are things that can't be taken away. PTL

Learning to blog

Hi--Today, I am learning to blog. They say, you never get too old to learn something new. So today I am learning to set up my first blog.

Also, today, (four generations) We went swimming and it was so refreshing!

I will try to have a bit of wisdom in each of my blogs, since I earned my grey hair, I should be full of wisdom. The first bit of wisdom is this. (NIV) "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:10