put up verb phrase To put away, store.
1969 DARE FW Addit (KY) = to store, put away, or put in storage as in a closet; (CwNC) put it up = put it away.
[DARE put up v phr 1 chiefly South, South Midland]
—Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English
I’m glad the dictionary included the phrase put up, but it’s hard to fathom the shortness of the entry since putting up is something I’ve taken part in from the time I helped Granny as a girl. Not to mention the fact that the entry really doesn’t address the process of preserving food directly.
This is the time of the year for putting up.
We’ve canned all week and today we hope to put up corn.
Every summer I go from anxiously awaiting the garden bounty to enjoying eating it and putting up this and that to feeling like I’m overwhelmed with it all!
Although it’s a lot of work we’ll be so glad we did it when the cold wind blows and we have good things to eat that with the Good Lord’s help we grew, harvested, and put up.
Last night’s video: Visiting the Mountain for the First Time – From My Highest Hill 1.
Tipper
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Such wonderful memories, helping Mother & Grandma & Aunt Bertie, put up all the garden stuff.
Many a time, carrying the corn or beans or taters to the Balsam Branch to wash it off good in a dishpan,
before they worked it up, we didn’t have running water in the house yet.
Oh, what I’d give to just be able to sit on the porch with them all again. Hear them talk, laughing and sing. What wonderful memories I have.
Hello y’all! I am feeling overwhelmed right now, too, and I have a small garden! But, I have 2 peach trees that I planted in 2021 and so this year they produced their first season of a million very small but delicious peaches. I culled twice, but not enough! I froze 20 pounds for my daughter to make peach wine, I froze them seasoned for peach cobblers, froze more to make preserves once it cools off in the Fall, I gave dozens away to my neighbors, and still I had more peaches! So, I was thinking about what on earth to do with these little peaches when I remembered my grandmother putting up spiced or pickled peaches, and went hunting for a recipe. I found your Grandma Minnie’s recipe in your Celebrating Appalachia Cookbook, and started the process last night. I just finished putting up a dozen jars, and if the left over syrup (surp) is anything to go by, they are going to be delicious! The next 2 weeks waiting for them to pickle is going to take forever! This time of year CAN be exhausting, but what a wonderful problem to have – all this bounty.
Some of my favorite memories are of the days spent canning and freezing the garden produce with my mom. She had a little building that was originally the wash house, where the previous owner did her laundry. Dad made it over into a canning kitchen, complete with a stove, a sink, and an old 1940s Kelvinator fridge that still ran like a top all the way into the 1990s. Many nights she and I would be out there until midnight or 1:00 in the morning, finishing up canning. I’m so thankful that she taught me how to can and to love doing it. I’m thinking of trying to can potatoes this year for the first time; does anyone else have any advice?
I don’t have any advice, but my daughter-in-law canned potatoes last year and they were convenient and delicious!
Tipper, that photo is so beautiful it should be on a calendar. I’ve heard “putting up” my whole life too. My mom is getting older and she’s finally allowed me to help her with putting up garden produce more and more. You should be proud of all the food you and Matt put up for your family, Tipper! What a labor of love but how deeply rewarding and nourishing.
after you put it up, has it been layed by?
Tipper, I hope this will not be taken amiss nor deemed, in any way, to take away from your blog. I post it because I think that your readers/viewers will also enjoy another offering.
There is a young couple in another part of NC in the foothills who exemplify the way of life you extol so correctly. Their names are Megan and Andy Lawson. They have a YouTube channel, True Grit: Appalachian Ways, that parallels and complements your Celebrating Appalachia channel.
That such a young couple has been able to thrive and raise 2 amazing children speaks volumes about the quality of their upbringing and the culture that produced them.
There is also an older couple, similarly located geographically, that your readers/ viewers might enjoy on their channel, Sheraton Park Farms.
I thought of these 2 channels because of your subject today: putting up.
We love Andy and Megan! They remind me a lot of Matt and me 🙂 I will check out the other one you mentioned.
I love their channel! They are so sweet and I learn a lot from her as well as you and your family Tipper along with my Grandma whom we called ‘mammy’ she grew up on a farm in WV and was filled to the gills with stories. Thank you for sharing. Both of you. P.S. a Calendar would be wonderful!!!!!
Put up or shut up!
Put up your dukes. 🙂
It would be fine if my cousin Marty came to visit if I didn’t have to put him up.
Hi Tipper and Acorns. I love Putting Up food. Whether it is a quart bag of Basil leaves in the freezer, one jar of fridge pickles, 50 pounds of dried rice or beans or 30 pounds of sausage in jars, I love it all. I miss the root cellar, can house and smoke house on the farm. Those days are gone. Things change. I love y’all.
Good morning Tipper and y’all. I enjoy reading your positive thoughts and comments and I thank you for giving me a pleasant visit so early in the day. Although the phrase “putting up” was not part of my commercialized upbringing, I do fondly remember it from bits of my childhood. I am so grateful to now have Tipper bring the phrase back into my life. I instantly knew what you were talking about. So now I use it. I’m thrilled to share that there are two of Matt’s favorite tomatoes appearing on the vines. Yes, they are late even though the seeds were started in the house several months ago. I couldn’t put them out at the normal time because the weather extremes this past spring were fierce. I never heard of Cherokee purple tomatoes before watching your videos. I’ll put them up using your open kettle method, Tipper. Being by myself causes a much smaller bounty than most of you have. At 77 years it’s a blessing to have the ability to plant and harvest. The basil plants are huge, the green beans are plentiful as are the turnips and beets. Kale got a late start thanks to the squirrels digging up what started, causing a second planting along with the spinach. Today I hope to dehydrate turnip greens, collard greens and parsley. In the past I’ve tried dehydrating basil, but it lost all its flavor. Now I’ll try coating the leaves with olive oil and freezing them. Has anyone in this august group had any success with this? Because they are a nightshade I’m not supposed to eat potatoes, but I grew some anyway and they were delicious. It’s too bad there’s no way of preserving watermelon because I have four of them coming along nicely. They are such a sweet treat! Thank you for letting me share my gardening delights with you. Blessings to all!
Put up – sat aside – Authorities put up a bounty on him but they never did catch him (I’ll admit I used AI to see if this one was common phraseology or specific to my area).
Similarly, put up – guarantee – He put up his bond and was out the next day.
Put up – build – They put up a new barn over the winter.
Put up – tolerate – They fought and scratched all the time. I can’t put up with that!
Put up – dare – They put up their sister to pull Momma’s hair.
Put up – fly- He put up a kite in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Put up – block off – The deputies put up crime scene tape across the road.
I could come up with more but I’ve still got maters to put up.
When I was a child I thought we were poor with all the vegetables, fruits and meat we “put up”. It wasn’t until I was an adult I realized we had eaten like kings. Oh, I yearn for some of those good meals we had from our pantry and freezer.
My mom and dad always put up lots of food for winter. There were many jars of green beans, tomatoes, peppers, carrots and pickles. Mama always froze corn. She never canned it. Frozen corn tastes the most like fresh. She also put up jars of apple pie filling, applesauce, pears, and jellies. During deer season, they would can deer meat. It was delicious that way. I didn’t put up anything this year. Hopefully, next year we can get a taller fence and grow a garden again. In the meantime, I am just happy to have tomatoes and cucumbers in our pots on the porch.
Tipper, I agree that putting up food can be overwhelming after a few months of breaking beans, shucking corn, and sterilizing jars. After spending hours stringing and breaking beans, I often wonder how Mammy and Mom managed to put up ten times as much as I do without complaining. Life was simple back then without the distraction of phones and modern-day interruptions. Right now, I have two bushels of apples on my kitchen floor that my sister gave me, and I have to put them up today. When it comes time to put the corn up, I might have to take a shortcut and put it in the freezer. That’s the easiest way to preserve it, but freezing comes with a risk of losing all the food and the time spent putting it up. That happened to me last year when I lost everything in a small freezer on my enclosed porch after a faulty breaker caused a localized power outage days before I noticed it. I still had my shuck beans to enjoy when the snow started falling.
Shirl a trick I have learned do with the power on a freezer that I don’t use everyday is to have a small voltage light connected to the power cord that will burn if the power is on. Something as simple as a multiple receptacle and a simple plug in bathroom light. Plug cord in one outlet and the light in the other. I even had a light wired into the pressure switch for my well pump that would only burn when the pump motor was running. The small amount of power used by doing either one this is not noticeable.
Then there’s the question of, what do you can, what do you dry, what do you simply just keep in the root cellar, that sort of thing. Different foods are handled differently. You’ve got to learn all the various methods of food preservation.
I grew up learning all about ‘putting up’ (and the hard work of growing what one needs to ‘put up’) and at 85 I am still ‘putting up’ but on a much lesser scale. No better life then one that grows a garden and then ‘puts up.’ 🙂
I recall canning time being a family affair. Mom and my Aunt Jewel would combine forces and supplies and can all day, dividing per agreement late on after the jars had cooled. Us two boys were ‘call as needed’ help and couldn’t stray too far. For much of our boyhood Mom had both a wood-burning range and a gas one. I’m not sure but I think she used the old cast iron wood burner the most. We had to keep the wood up, including cutting those sawmill edger strips as needed but of course the smart thing was to already have them cut. No air conditioning of course (never had heard of it) and that kitchen got like a furnace. It would have been nice if Dad could’ve taken Mom out to eat that night but there was no thought of such a thing. Some of Mom’s last canning is still under the house they lived in last. It is well over 15 years old now but I couldn’t bring myself to pour it out if it were up to me, which it is not. Full canning jars are emblematic of so many things. To a person who knows, no words are needed. To one who does not, words can’t tell all the meaning.
Ron, I dearly love your comments because of being able to relate to many of them. I know all about the days of no air conditioning, mother and grandmother working together putting up things and hanging around close by in case I was needed. One of my neighbors built a small outside building with an electric stove and running water for a sink that was used to keep the heat out of the house when he and his wife were canning. Like you I have still have some jars my wife, mother or mother in law canned that I refuse to empty. I keep them in memory of these loved ones.
“Putting up” is the only description I ever heard when I was young. We have put up peas, okra, peppers, tomatoes, butterbeans and corn so far. This fall we will put up turnips, mustard and collards. Then we will sit back this winter and enjoy all the wonderful food!
And here I thought I accomplished something by drying up some basil. Enough to make a small jar I’m pitiful next to ya’ll!
You did accomplish something! Every little bit counts 🙂
vegetables are looking good, you are blessed, God bless Papaw Tony with deliverance from sickness and disease, heal his body Lord , make him well in Jesus name
My back aches a bit today but as I look around my kitchen I accept the minor pain as my heart swells with happiness. I’m preparing to drop off “love letters” later today. Sharing food, especially homemade and home grown, is my love language. Yesterday was spent shredding zucchini and preparing 6 loaves of bread. I also prepared 2 zucchini casseroles and will be going out to pick cucumbers and tomatoes for my youngest granddaughter. I will share loaves with my neighbor who is changing my lawnmower tire and 2 very sweet, new neighbors of my grandson, who have shown him such kindness since he bought his little starter home. The puttin’ up of pre-measured bags of shredded zucchini is all I’ve accomplished this season. My next goal is to make and can Mommer’s Sweet & Sassy Salsa. My grands came up with this “label” when they were much younger and it stuck. I’m also on the lookout for a pop up farm stand or a spot at our Farmer’s Market, for some Calhoun Co peaches. This area of our state, a little over an hour south-ish of me, along the IL River, is known all over for their peaches. I’ve rattled long enough. Have a blessed weekend Acorns♡
Put up automatically makes my mind turn to canning and freezing. My sister in law has put up 334 ears of corn in freezer, 84 jars of green beans, several bags of purple hulls, bell peppers and okra. Wish I could have been in TN to help her or just to see her sweet face. It’s been too many years since I could travel, Drs orders got into the way but I’m thankful for your daily dose and texting with her to put a face on the good in life. Tipper, we need you so much now in these uncertain times. Thank you for listening when God gave you the idea to start this blog.
Tipper–In truth, and who would have thought it, I think Joe Hall and Michael Montgomery missed the language boat on this one. “Putting up” is common to me, and while it can have other connotations such as “I’m tired of putting up with posts from that Casada feller,” far and away the most common is connected with story food (especially canning). I can hear Momma’s voice, echoing down over the years, saying: “I hope to put up a 100 quarts of apples this year.”
It seemed like when I was a youngster my mother and grandmother would work all summer “putting up” for the winter months. The food grown and preserved during the summer growing season and a large 500 lb hog killed around Thanksgiving would be our main source of yearly food, not much bought at the store and never going out and eating at a restaurant.
How many of us older members grew up back in the days of the country stores saying “the store” and everyone knew the store you were referring too?
I remember calling the little store across the road from our house, “the store”. It was a gas station that carried canned food, bread, milk, sliced deli meats, bologna and cheeses—as well as—pop, candy and chips. Dad would send me to ‘the store’ to get him a can of Prince Albert or Half and Half tobacco. (Yea, the lady that owned it would trust me to take the tobacco to my dad.). Mama would send me to ‘the store’ for some sliced bologna for lunch. If we were lucky, sometimes we got a nickel or a dime to buy some Penney candy. It was amazing to get ten pieces for ten cents. This was a long time ago.
Brenda, a favorite memory of the old country store is of the pulpwooders, loggers, hunters and some others stopping by at dinner time- lunch for the high class people, and get them a thick slice of boloney, slice of rat cheese, a sleeve of sody (saltine) crackers and drink (drank) and then set around on the front porch or around the pot bellied stove depending on the time of year “jawing” with one another while eating. One knife was used to cut everything and it would not be wiped off in between slicing the cheese and boloney. Some others might eat Lance Crackers, sardines, viennies or pork and beans. Brenda I also remember the candy and having to be careful and check a candy bar for worms during the hot summer time and especially of being able to buy shotgun shells for a nickel or dime a piece and not having to buy a full 25 shell box.
Over fifty years ago, my cousin and I walked to the local little store ( no bigger than 12 x 12 and sold only pop, ice cream, chips and candy) and bought two candy bars that had worms in them. The worms were quite a shock and I have never heard of this since that summer day in the early 70’s.
“Putting up” is hard work but reaps such rich rewards. Putting up beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, okra, squash, cucumbers, potatoes means mighty fine eating the rest of the year. Some years the vegetables come in all at once and it seemed like we’d never get them all canned or frozen or pickled. Good hard work that instills worthy values in all involved (whether they’ll admit it then or not).