We've been noticing a chill in the air lately. Any day now, we're expecting a frost to bring an end to this year's gardening season. If those late tomatoes haven't ripened yet, they probably will soon be frost-bit, so we may as well pick 'em green and use 'em green, or maybe pick 'em hoping they will ripen on the shelf. On the farm, during the growing season we used to can some of the tomatoes. Otherwise, after the frost, no more tomatoes.
I sometimes resort to our old-fashioned Ozark speech when I think about foods this time of year. For example, I'm recalling tater-diggin' time. Diggin' taters was purty much work. Some people used a tater fork fer diggin 'em out. That really got to be work after awhile. We never had a tater fork ourselves. When we dug taters, Dad would hitch one of the horses to a single-shovel plow, the same one we used to lay out our garden rows, and just plow right down the tater row. A few taters might get sliced by the plow, but most of them were rolled right out on top of the ground. My brothers and I were the tater picker-uppers. We stored our taters in wood slat crates in the cellar under the back porch. Some people had root cellars. My Grandpa on Mom's side used to bury potatoes and turnips and other things and cover them over with straw and burlap bags and a layer of dirt. I never learned how to do that. I'm afraid if I tried something like that everything would spoil.
After the taters was dug, it was time to sow turnips. Turnips make purty fine treats. They mature over quite a long period of time, some early, some late, and you can pull 'em, peel 'em, and eat 'em raw right there, or you can slice 'em, boil 'em, and eat 'em at the table. Either way is good. And, you can make turnip greens with the tops. That's purty fine, too.
We always did a lot of home canning. Mom would can all kinds of things from the garden, especially beans and corn, even tomatoes, and peaches whenever we could get them or grow them. Even sausages could be canned in jars, Mason or Kerr jars, often half-gallons.
We used to pull the onions and tie bunches together to hang up to dry along the walls of the garage. They would keep pretty well that way if they didn't freeze. That method wasn't for deep winter.
Usually by this time of year the sweet corn season was past. It was time to harvest the popcorn and the field corn. By now, the corn would have dried on the stalk, and the kernels would be hard. In old Ozark speech, sweet corn used to be referred to as "roasting ears," or more exactly, "ros'n ears." We didn't actually roast them ourselves, we boiled them. But roasting the ears over a fire or hot coals was common in the old times.
This time of year, of course, was pumpkin harvesting season. But nobody called a pumpkin a pumpkin. In Ozark, the word is punkin. And it is not pernounced pun-kin, but more like pung-kin. I may need to remind the readers that in Ozark speech, you don't pronounce words, you pernounce 'em. Some punkins of course get carved into jack-o-lanterns fer Halloween. You put a candle in the jack-o-lantern to make that erie flickering light which highlights the big-toothed grinny ghoully face. But, gratefully, many other punkins get made into punkin pies, and that, of course, is one of the world's finest culinary fixin's. Punkin pie is just about the ultimate, if not actually plumb there. A sweet tater pie looks a little like a punkin pie, but the sweet tater just can't compete. Still, when well done, both of them are purty good in the fall of the year. It helps either of 'em to have some whupped cream slathered over the slices of pie, and I'm not talkin' about that store-bought Cool Whip stuff. Uh-oh, let me correct my grammar. That should be, "I ain't talkin' 'bout Cool Whip."
With the arrival of cold weather, it soon is hog-butcherin' time. These days, that almost always means involving a processing company. In the 1940s, we did our own hogs. You do need some people around who've done it before and know what they're doing. As a young boy, my job usually involved heating up the water in the scalding barrel. I fed the fire under the barrel. Someone had to fix a lifting apparatus over the scalding barrel, a block and tackle, a fence stretcher, or a chain hoist. After the animal was killed, the carcass was hoisted up and lowered into the hot water. The scalding water loosened the hair, and made it easier to scrape off. Then the skilled person had to start carving up the parts and pieces. I never learned to do that part. I did help salt the pork slabs and help render the fat into lard. The lard was very valuable shortening back in those days. These days, of course, meat comes from the store. You don't have to scald or scrape or render or salt down; it comes all wrapped and purty.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 11/05/2014