Summer - Making Food
Canning and preserving vegetables
Vegetables and fruit were preserved and canned to be eaten
during the winter. Norma Ehlers remembers how her family canned vegetables.
 "First
of all, plant your garden, hoe your garden, pick the food,
tomatoes, beans, peas…turnips …You take the
ends off, both ends of the bean, and then…put them
in a pan of water and then from that you…would…put
the beans directly into the jar and put water and salt
in that jar …that rubber ring would go on that
and the lid would screw on that and then you'd put them
down in a water bath or a pressure cooker… the
water would get boiling and that would cook the beans,
and…there wasn't spoilage…My mom used to make
vegetable soup… She'd put some carrots and some
tomatoes and some peas and beans and everything together…Then, in
the wintertime we would cook it up and then put all those
delicious vegetables into it and have a wonderful soup."
-- Norma Ehlers  (Quicktime required) |
Least Favorite Chores
Every child had favorite chores and chores they didn't like
to do. Ruth Nettleton said she didn't like churning cream
into butter.
| "We had a big old barrel churn. And I suppose about
five gallons of cream at a time was put in a churn and
then you churned it. And you cranked it. And you couldn't
do it fast… So you had to make it thump as it went
down so it would work. And I didn't like to churn."
-- Ruth
Nettleton (Quicktime required) |
 |
Ruth also didn't like the chore of cleaning the chicken manure
out of the chicken house to be used as fertilizer on the family's
garden. She didn't like going to the outhouse when it was
muddy or rainy. And she didn't like the smell of kerosene
lamps. One of Harvey Pickrel's chores was plucking the feathers
from the chicken after it was killed. He disliked it so much,
he doesn't like to eat chicken to this day.
Gathering eggs
Chickens were very important to farm families. They gathered
and ate the eggs, and killed and ate the chickens. Eggs were
sold in town to make a little bit of money. Children gathered
eggs, sometimes risking a peck on the hand from angry hens.
Albert Friesen gathered eggs as a child in the 1920s, and helped
his father raise chickens. "We had a chicken …would
lay about 12 to 15 eggs…and then she would sit on those
eggs until they hatched." Like most children, he also disliked
cleaning the chicken coop. Hollis Miller said one of his chores
was plucking the feathers off the chicken after it had been
killed. His mother finished preparing the chicken and the family
enjoyed a wonderful chicken dinner.
Written by Claudia Reinhardt.
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Making
Food
