And if we didn’t have two hogs that would dress five hundred pounds apiece, why, we didn’t have no meat. My daddy would say, “We ain’t got no meat. What are we gonna do?”
It wasn’t like it is this day and time. You have hogs dresses to about a hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds. But back then they wanted them dressed five hundred pounds. Salt-cured it and canned a lot of meat. And then, if you killed a beef, why, that was usually all canned up. Well there was six of us boys in my family, and if you didn’t have five hundred half-a-gallon fruit jars full, you didn’t have nothing much to eat.
Take a half-a-gallon of cherries or blackberries, it didn’t go far with six boys eating out of it.
—Ralph Crouse, 1922 Alleghany County Snowbird Gravy and Dishpan Pie – Mountain People Recall written by Patsy Moore Ginns.
Now that was some big hogs and a lot of canning jars! But when you think of the amount of food it took to feed six boys and the rest of the family without grocery stores it sounds more reasonable.
I go to the grocery store once a week so we by no means grow everything we eat, but we do try to put up as much as we can each year. It is beyond rewarding to grow vegetables and put up some of the goodness for future use.
This time of the year we are out of most of the things we canned, froze, or dried last year so even though the gardens are just beginning to take off I’m already thinking about putting up the harvest.
Even though we’ve been gardening and putting up for years, sometimes I stumble across something new to add to my must have on the canning shelves list.
We’ve always canned tomatoes, but last year was the first year I canned tomato juice. I’ve so enjoyed it!
I used a steam juicer to process the extra tommy-toes and then canned the juice. It was so easy because the steam juicer did most of the work. I know I’ll can tomato juice from now own.
Last night’s video: Planting in the Rain.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
My parents bought a freezer but couldn’t put nothin in it cause it wooden run. My dimwit brother looked in the back of the thang and said “Ain’t got no lectricity in it.” Daddy went lookin fur some lectricity and they tolt him they’d brang him some but that they were behind and it’d be about 5 or 8 years fore it got thar.
Tipper- I just realized that today is your birthday. I hope you have the greatest day ever! You give us all so much joy from your blog and videos. You deserve the best!
I can and freeze vegetables from the garden. I only got into canning much in the last few years since I have retired. Gardening is so much more pleasurable now that we have time to do it. My mama always canned lots of vegetables and also deer meat. We butchered a hog or a beef most years, but mama and dad would wrap and freeze them. Dad supplemented our meat with squirrels, rabbits and deer. We also always picked berries for jelly and freezing. We picked wild strawberries and blackberries. We knew where there were apple and pear trees we could pick from. Mama canned apple pie filling and pears for winter. We also gathered walnuts to have for cakes and Christmas candies. My parents also dug lots of ramps and canned those for delicious winter meals. We were poor in that we didn’t have fancy clothes—but we had clean clothes. We didn’t have dinner out—we had home cooked dinners and desserts and breads. We didn’t have many toys—but we always had a horse or a bike to ride, friends to play with, and a giant yard to run in. We thought we were poor—but we were rich in love and all the good things in life that really matter. I hope my children and grandchildren will feel the same way when they grow up. Happy Birthday again!!!
Brenda, It’s not my birthday 🙂 You might be thinking of mine and Matt’s together. His was May 1 and mine is August 5 🙂 But thank you for the good wishes and for sharing about our mama and daddy!!
lol. I had it written on my calendar for May 5th. Oh well. Happy very early birthday then. Haha I even mailed you a card.
Those folks sure did a powerful lot of canning.
I used to help Grandmother can. we killed 10 hogs each year and she would can sausage ball’s in jar. yummy does anyone have recipe for cooking them i remember after cooking would turn jars upside-down so lard could harden and seal off.
Anyone have recipe
As a child growing up, we grew just about everything we ate. What wasn’t canned was frozen and when hog killing time came around, there was plenty of meat in our smokehouse. My parents were always thankful for another year of being able to provide food for our family.
My niece is a psychologist for the Alleghany County school system.
We try to raise up 2 or 3 hogs every year for the freezers. We always try to get them up to 400 pounds. The only time we raised small hogs was the year our youngest daughter showed FFA pigs at the Spokane Junior Livestock Show. They always wanted the market hogs at around 125-150 pounds. That was the one and only time she showed hogs, she said they were too much trouble, lol. She went back to showing sheep and steers.
Gardening, fishing, ( since we lived on the Canadian coast, it was salt water/ocean fish) a lot of deer hunting, raising our own fowl (chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys) and usually two pigs each year – these were a necessity in my childhood – we also had a small orchard and many berry bushes of various kinds – we had no corner store – self sufficiency was a must – and as Randy said, children back in the day had no choice but to pull their own weight in all of this – if you were a part of the family, no matter the age, you had a chore or two to do – which was added to as you aged and were able and became more responsible. There was never a time of ‘I am bored’ or ‘there’s nothing to do.’ Our plot of land was small, but boy, did we make use of as much as we were able to cultivate and use!
It’s funny how folks used to say things like we ain’t got no meat when they really mean not enough. Mom had Daddy build shelves for her canned food. She loved to show visitors how pretty and white the kraut was, or a glistening jar of jelly she held up to the light. The smokehouse and canning shelves bring back so many memories. I freeze my green beans, corn, and zucchini, and can or dehydrate the tomatoes. Mom didn’t have a freezer when she was raising her family, even if she had one, I doubt she would have trusted putting all that hard work in there to lose in case the power went off. That happened to me two years ago, and I could have cried.
This is just a thought of mine, the reason for wanting to have the 500 lb hogs was to have fat to render out for lard and cracklings. I have the two cast iron “wash” pots my grandparents used to render out the lard and also used for washing their clothes. Granddaddy didn’t want anyone but him to render out the lard, the great fear was of scorching the lard. Everything was cooked or fried using this lard and anything cooked in scorched lard would have a scorched taste. Remember the 5 gal lard cans the lard was kept in.
Nothing to do with any of the posts, but 92 years ago this afternoon-May 5, 1933 a large tornado came out of Georgia, and through the town of Belton, SC and on through southern Greenville County. It came within 100 yards of my maternal grandparents home before turning and centering some another family member’s home killing 5 of them. Anyone interested can Google Belton, SC tornado May 5, 1933, I heard it was at one time considered in the top 5 SC tornadoes.
That’s a lot of canning to put up 500 jars! And to thinks, back then they didn’t have all the convenient canning equipment like we do now, nor the air conditioning in their homes. I am thankful some things have changed since them days gone by that makes life easier to put up food and just life in general.
Tipper, would you make a video of you using the steam canner for juice? I bought one at an estate sale with tomato juice and scuppernong juice in mind and I’m sure I can probably find YouTube video tutorials but, honestly, I’d just rather watch you. You explain things plainly and don’t use a lot of “musts” or “have tos” and your style of teaching is great because you’re so relatable. Also, I have envied every glass of tomato juice I’ve seen you drink on your channel- my mouth just watered!
Melanie-you can see how it works in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srviOQMXgLs Thank you!
David, my mother had an apparatus for sealing metal cans but I don’t remember using it much and I think we couldn’t us it with tomatoes because of the acid. Even though people did use metal cans at one time for food preservation I wonder why it’s still called canning, too. My father made the garden. I don’t remember that mother or the kids did much in his garden but the older ones might have. But I did help with the meat and vegetables once they came to the house. We had a dirt cellar so it was moist sometimes and jar lids would rust. We also froze food in wide-mouth straight-sided jars, those without shoulders and square plastic freezer containers that were made for that purpose. Our freezer barely had room for several quarts of Mayfield ice cream my sister brought when she came home from E Tn. Mayfield wasn’t sold where we lived about 50 miles west. I don’t remember the large chest freezer on the back porch ever being less than almost full.
My grandparents and parents grew big gardens and canned, pickled, and sun-dried a lot of food. During WW II, we cooked and canned beef by reservation in the kitchen at Walhalla High School. As an adult, working and traveling a lot, I became a lazy hobbyist-type food putter-upper. I bought a yankee apple peeler and corer and a five-tray electric dehydrator in which I dried fruit and made venison jerky.
Gene, I remember my mother and grandparents going to Hickory Tavern High School, Laurens County, SC in the early 1960’s and canning peaches in metal cans. Green beans and such were canned at home. Do you or anyone else remember the “tater houses” at the high schools? They were heat controlled buildings for farmers to store their sweet potatoes.
Had never heard of a steam juicer. But canned tomato juice is a favorite thing of mine. We’ve never made a practice of buying it to drink though we have bought V8 to go in soups. I expect vegetable juices are really healthy provided they aren’t loaded up with sugar, salt, etc. By the way, I could see that picture of canning jars finding multiple decorative uses in a kitchen or dining room; place mats, shelf liners, backsplash or even a door hanger. I can recall when I was a boy that cornucopias got a lot of use as decorative elements. And I still remember a picture of yours from several years ago of jelly jars in the window with the sun shining through them. They looked like jewels but were more meaningful. Off the subject but if you get over to the Hardman Farm the sarvis by the steps is loaded this year.
I grew up with canning. My father planted at least an acre of vegetables every year and my mother put up as much of it as she could. Our canning room held about twice the number of jars shown in the picture above with fruits, vegetables and juices. We also had fruit trees, strawberries & rhubarb. More than enough for a family of seven. When I was around eleven, she bought a huge chest freezer and froze a lot of the vegetables and meat. We rarely bought any vegetables from the store with the exception of lettuce, cucumbers, celery used for salads. My mother cooked everything we ate and there were no drive-thru eateries when I was growing up (I’m 76.) I helped plant, hoe the weeds out, reap the vegetables in the garden and can them. This instilled in me a love of the process and when I married, I also planted, reaped and canned vegetables. Granted my garden wasn’t as large and varied as daddy’s but our family had some home-grown vegetables to eat over the freezing Ohio winters. My mother-in-law also planted a garden every year and canned vegetables. She canned this wonderful tomato soup concoction with grounded up vegetables and spices added. You could use it as a soup or add it to other foods. She’s been gone now for almost nine years, but she continued to can until she was ninety.
Would you be willing to share her tomato soup recipe. I live in Canada. My Mom also made tomato soup but when she passed her recipe book disappeared and I can’t remember how she did it.
ptriciamillson@gmail.com
Tricia, my childhood life was similar to yours. Eating in a restaurant was unheard of, we would fix and eat hotdogs on special occasions. We had the largest chest freezer you could buy from Sears and Roebuck (1950’s) that we would fill up each summer. This did not include the food that had been canned. My mother and father in law had two of the largest chest freezers and a upright freezer they would fill up each summer, she also canned hundreds of jars of green beans and tomatoes. Many times my father in law would come from his garden with the bed (4x6x2) of his truck full of merit corn. All of their children ( maybe even a son in law or two) would come back and help them with shucking and silking the corn and help prepare it for freezing. Family working together, it don’t get any better than that.
When you’re able to can your own food you know what’s in it. None of those preservatives and extra sodium. Just nature’s bounty.
Ever wonder why it was called “canning” when everything
was “canned” in glass jars?
Merriam-Webster defines can as:
“c: a jar for packing or preserving fruit or vegetables”
These stories both make me respect the mamas and daddies of those days even more, and feel thankful that I can run out and grab what I need if the garden didn’t do well or I’m out. But what a dreamy pantry!
It definitely is a wonderful feeling to eat what we can and put up ourselves. We’ve gotten spoiled, and don’t put up near what once was. I’m thinking that may have to become more prevalent with the way things are going.
There was only 4 of us, but I remember as a child growing up in the 50-60’a when we would grow nearly everything we ate, not very much bought at a grocery store. We lived beside of my maternal grandparents.and my mother and grandmother would often work together canning, freezing or preserving the vegetables and making jelly out of many things. Recently some have wrote about the blackberries blooming, I remember when we would make a “party” out of picking blackberries on a day with my grandparents and some neighbors picking blackberries together. Like it was said, our goal was to each have two hogs to weigh at least 500 lbs each year, much of the meat would be salt cured. We did not raise or often eat beef. We raised our own chickens and would eat rabbits and squirrels to go along with the other things during the cold winter months. Back then, there were no deer around here, but they would not and could not be tolerated eating our gardens like they do now. I mentioned working together, my Daddy worked a day shift job, but helped work a large garden each year when he got home each day, unlike today, children worked right along with the adults in these gardens. A dose of “hickory tea” was sometimes needed to encourage the children, but after a dose or two no more would be needed. The parents were not being mean, it was just needed for everyone to work together. I thank God for my parents teaching me these work ethics that I have had my entire working life.
I really enjoyed reading about your childhood, Randy. 🙂