In our back yard was one of the biggest elm trees you could ever find. It was so large you could not put your arms around it and the branches were so big that they covered the entire back of the house with shade and then hung over to the north side of the house about another ten feet. On top of that with some help from my trusted pal, Eddy Harris, I had one of the largest tree houses you can imagine. I bet you could have at least six people sitting down in it at one time. That tree offered the coolest shade and I mean temperature wise. Dee Johnson lives in that house now and I hope he is still taking care of that elm tree and enjoying the shade.
Anyway during the summer months our garden put off more green beans than the entire town could eat but we had to put them up for the winter. "Putting them up" means to "can them" or to preserve them for the winter. In the early years before "freezer bags" we put them in Ball jars and used a pressure cooker to heat the beans and liquid in the jar until the contents were hot enough to drive out the air and as the contents cooled a vacuum would be created and the lid would seal on the jar.
Just as a side note many folks criticized us for not being environmentally friendly back then but we did not sit in the air conditioned house because we did not have an air conditioner and we recycled those jars every year and we never froze our vegetables which took electricity made with coal.
Back to canning: I always enjoyed watching and helping during this process and when you heard the lids pop you knew the seal was good on each jar. After a few days we would take all the jars to the cellar (remember from earlier stories about the hole in the ground where we hid during tornadoes) and put them on the shelves until winter when we would take them out and mom would cook them for lunch or dinner (supper where we came from was dinner and dinner was lunch). I don't know why I ever changed but it annoyed me when I moved to Chicago and folks would give me a hard time about that. As long as we are getting out my suppressed feelings let me tell you that PICKUPS are not trucks (refer to an earlier story).
Now back to the process leading up to the canning of those beans. The first thing that happened prior to breakfast or immediately after everyone would go to the garden to pick anything that was ripe for harvest. Oh and I should mention that a garden was NOT a tiny little patch of vegetables but easily 1/2 an acre to 2 depending on what dad felt like doing that year. Generally during the summer the only thing still producing was tomatoes and green beans and of course rhubarb and probably corn. On those green beans, we would have five gallon buckets full and everyone would sit in lawn chairs or folding chairs under the tree and proceed to process the beans. What that meant was you snapped off both ends of the bean and then stripped from the seam of the green bean what was stringy if the bean was a little too ripe and then you would break the beans into pieces about 1.5 inches long. I am not sure why 1.5 inches was the right length but for the most part that is what our instructions were from mom. The amazing thing to me was that dad and mom could out snap everyone else put together. They were fast and in fact I thought I was pretty good as I learned how to snap beans in both hands at the same time. It was work and I hated it for the most part but now that I look back I remember talking and drinking iced tea and generally having a great time with the family. We all worked together getting ready for winter.
What did I learn from the Osage:
- The best times were family times with no TV
- Work was really an opportunity to spend time together with a common goal
- Spending time together is where we learned our values by hearing stories from our parents about their parents and how they grew up
- I would not trade ONE TV show or one time with friends for the memories of working together with my folks
Thanks for your time,
gary@thepioneerman.com
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