Grandma's Kitchen

The old cook stove.

I was born into a family of farmers way back in 1937. My earliest memories are of farm life and especially grandma’s kitchen. Grandma’s kitchen was the central most part of the house. It was where everyone started their day and came back to at lunchtime and the end of the day. 

Everyone old enough was given farm chores to do and stayed busy tending the crops, milking and feeding the cows. It seems that most of the entire year was spent with some kind of chore that needed doing and everyone knew what their chores were.

Coal fired heater.

Some chores for younger children were to walk through the crops and use a hoe to chop out the weeds and loosen the soil so the roots would be able to get more water and air. Someone had to clean the mule’s Jack's barn and put down fresh hay from the hay loft for him to sleep in. 

Grandpa had a blacksmith shop where he repaired his farming implements and plows and other things that needed mending. He was quite skilled with his hands as far as repairing things.

The Old Outhouse

The old white farmhouse trimmed in green was not insulated back in the thirties and forties so in the winter it was really cold in the wintertime. Grandma’s house had three kinds of heat in the early morning. The fireplace in the sitting room, sometimes referred to as a parlor, a coal fired small stove in one corner of the kitchen and the wood cook stove on the other side. I slept under so many of grandma’s home-made quilts I could not turn over at night. When I woke up those cold winter mornings, I would grab my clothes, run to the kitchen and get behind the big wood cook stove where it was warm to dress.

World War I well pump

On the farm, we had no running water or indoor plumbing. Everyone except grandma was expected to use the outhouse. Toilet paper either was not yet invented or was hard to come by because we used an old Sears’s catalog. Grandma, being the lady of the house had a chamber pot in the bedroom which someone had to take to the outhouse and empty it every morning. That was a chore I was glad I did not have.

I had the pleasant task of feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. That was a fun job and easy for me. I would take a bag of corn and scatter it on the ground in and the chickens would come running. I would then get a basket and go into the hen house to gather the eggs.
The first order of the day before I woke up, someone would build a fire in the cook stove and the small coal burning stove. While the cook stove was heating up a large kettle of water was placed on the coal burning stove for washing dishes after everyone ate. This particular part of farm life took place every day, summer or winter.

Bread hutch.

One of the young boys would go to the well and pump enough water to last through at least noon. It was someone’s job to keep the house well supplied with water. The water was kept in an oak bucket on the back porch with a dipper hanging from a nail to drink from when you got thirsty. While the stove was getting hot, grandma would go to her bread hutch and make a big batch of biscuits. She would sift flour into her big wooden bowl and ad baking powder and lard, then kneed the dough until it was just right for rolling out on a flat wooden board with her rolling pin.

The old ice box.

The family was fairly large so the table was long and had a bench for the young’uns on the back side. Grandpa sat at the head of the table and grandma sat at the other end. There were chairs on the other side for the older children.

After breakfast everyone would disappear, off to do their morning chores except for the younger daughter whose job it was to help grandma clean up the kitchen and get prepared for the noon meal. The whole process started all over again. 

The wood cook stove was re-stoked for the heat to get back up to cooking temperature and grandma would choose which vegetables from the garden she would cook. Everyone in the field would put their tools down right where they were working so they could remember where to restart their chores and return to the kitchen for the noon meal. After that the process started over for the evening meal. It seemed as if grandma's job was never done.

Grandpa and Jack the mule.

My main job was playing in the corn rows and sometimes I picked pole beans which grew on the corn stalks. I sometimes went into the hayloft and played in the hay. It was great fun being raised on a farm but I now realize how much hard work went into farming. There is so much to learn about what to plant, when to plant, when to harvest and keep something growing nearly year-round.

Grandpa made money selling his crops, milk, butter and eggs to the local market. He and Jack the mule would load up the wagon once a week and head to the nearby market where he would sell his produce. For the 1940’s, he made a pretty good living as well as kept his family well fed.

To My Friends in Connecticut and Maryland

To my friends in Connecticut. I was re-reading my copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights today and found some interesting facts about rights.

The Second Amendment of The Bill of Rights written in 1764, most everyone already knows pretty well: 

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Article 1, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the Bill of Rights has a one sentence clause, which is not superseded by the Constitution, states: 

“No bill of Attainder or ex post facto shall be passed.”

For those without a dictionary, Attainder means: 

“confiscation of rights or property”

Ex post facto means: 

“events that have already occurred as well as to subsequent events that will occur in the future.”

So by that set of laws on the books in our nation’s capital no one can take away your right to bear arms nor your arms which are your property.