Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Summer (the season) (07/09/09)
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TITLE: Summers Not Forgotten | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Reicks
07/13/09 -
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Early memories include the last day before summer vacation from a one room country school¸ kindergarten through grade eight. Each student’s mother would make a special dish to share at the school picnic. My mom could be counted on to make homemade baked beans in a large roasting pan, plenty for everyone to have extra helpings. The teacher always had ice cream packed in dry ice to keep it cold until all were satisfied with the sweet treat.
When my Illinois cousins came to spend their summer on an Iowa farm, they initiated all kinds of fun. We went cave hunting in the limestone cliffs of Northeast Iowa. One cave was known as Ice Cave because just a few feet inside the opening, there were hunks of ice gripping the walls. Oh! How good it felt to approach that cool cavity and walk a few feet inside on a very hot day in August. Warm air coming through a hole in the top of the cavern kept cold air inside the cave.
Dad harvested oats and barley with a machine that cut the grain and bound the bundles of stalks with twine. Men stacked the bundles in the field. On threshing day, it was so exciting to see a large steam engine pulling a huge threshing machine arrive to separate the grain from the stalks leaving piles of straw. A quick thinking farmer grabbed my city cousin who attempted to look between the circulating belt running between the tractor and the threshing machine.
Rotten eggs were eggs found in various places laid there by free running chickens that for some reason abandoned their eggs and did not hatch them. The city kids thought it great fun to throw rotten sulfur stinking eggs at the hard working men driving the grain wagons.
My younger brother and I built many a farm in the dirt. Sticks and strings became fences. Old pieces of wood were made into farm buildings. Small hard rubber toy tractors, horses, cows, pigs and chickens completed the farm.
Back in the 1930’s, all farms had big red barns and large white farm houses. Farmers still farmed with horses. Most farmers milked cows, fattened pigs and kept chickens for eggs. Also, my family raised beef cattle and sheep. With vegetable gardens, berry patches, grape vines, and orchards, farm families were well fed and self-sufficient.
In warm weather, chickens ran free eating grass; the hens laid eggs with dark yolks. The horses and cattle fed on portions of grains with stacked hay in the winter and lush grass in the summer.
In late summer, my aunts stomped ripe Concord grapes, squishing out the purple juice. Large hunks of ice from the ice house were chipped to chill the flavorsome thirst-quencher. Months earlier, the large ice blocks had been cut from a frozen river and packed in sawdust in the icehouse.
The blocks of ice were placed in an icebox which looked something like a refrigerator. The butter, meat, milk, and other perishables were kept cold. My family used a different method; food was placed in a metal can hung in the large tank where cold water was pumped into it by a windmill. When the wind blew the wheel atop the tall windmill, that power pumped water from the deep well. Sometimes, foods in containers were placed on the cold dirt floor of the cellar below the house.
As a kid, I waded in the creek, fished in river, hiked in the nearby woods, and explored Grandpa’s old grain mill. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, he ground grain, by water power from Canoe Creek, for human and animal consumption.
Young farm animals were such a delight—the wobbly calves, squealing piggies, and fluffy little chicks. How fun to find mother cat’s babies hidden away in the hay loft.
In the woods, we picked gooseberries or blackberries. Mom turned the fruit into tasty pies. From the small garden near the house and the huge garden in the field rows, so Dad could cultivate it when the corn rows were plowed, we ate fresh food. Radishes, lettuce, cabbage, peppers, potatoes, green beans, squash, sweet corn, parsnips, carrots, and other healthy vegetables were enjoyed at our farm table.
The summertime memories of my formative years: absorbing warmth from the sun, family and friends; eating nutritious food; strengthening from work or play; enjoying life—deepen appreciation of a priceless enriched heritage for every season of my years.
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