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From Grandma's Album... Chesapeake Harvest – I'd Say We Were Rich!
Our garden dirt we toted in by the bucket and wheelbarrow from the wooded area next door. The dirt around the small pond (full of frogs!) was black and rich and our crops, and weeds just jumped right out of the ground. It was my chore to water the plants. We had only a hand pump outside, but I had two large cans that daddy and Charles soldered a hand-punched covered spout onto to make a sprinkler. Neighborhood children envied me both the job and the sprinkling cans and would pump for me as I walked the rows. They marveled at the growing process. Of course, Mother delivered cans and jars, just tokens really, to their homes at the end of summer when we left our shore house for city school. Oh what a harvest it was! What delicious vegetable soup they made, a little bit of this and that as they ripened! Soup meat was free in those days and leftovers from dinner usually found their way into the pot. Bacon, frankfurters and sausage added strength when we could afford them. Crabs and fish caught from our pier did, too.
And grapes! Oh, the grapes! Daddy made two arbors of scrounged pipe, one leading from the house down to the water and the other along the south side of the garden where they got full sun. We had black concords, red grapes, and sweet white grapes. The fruit was tiny compared to store fruit, but so, so delicious, especially picked on long hot afternoons when they had been sitting in the sun. Of course, we had to compete with bees and yellow jackets for the fruit but, despite their contention of ownership, there was definitely enough to share. We ate and ate and made jelly and more jelly and filled the old "Babicka Picek cupboard".
Our larder was full and beautiful. We didn't miss red meat. We raised chickens and ducks, my job to feed and water. When Daddy did plumbing jobs for a farmer, he received a great "setting hen," a Rhode Island Red, and a dozen black giant chicken and some duck eggs that we raised up into quite a flock. At other times he would get a goose as payment or as a Christmas bonus and while most became dinner fairly soon, the females laid a lot of eggs over the years.
Of course, we fished from our pier and the bay. Gasoline was a dollar for five gallons. Charles and Daddy were our fishermen. "Sunnies" were delicious pan-fried in real butter with home-grown fresh dill. White perch, yellow perch, black bass and other fish made everything from the main plate at dinner to "croquettes" and a sauce for noodles. I even caught a rock bass in 1934 that set the record of 19 ½ inches! Mother and I crabbed for the deliciously famous Chesapeake blue channel crabs. What great crab cakes! What delicious eating! Who said we were poor? I'd say I was rich, wouldn't you?
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During the Depression years I suppose we would have been termed poor, but what beautiful memories I have of my
rich youth! I was never ill, always full of energy that I attribute to scads of wonderful fresh organic vegetables picked each
morning by my mother. After repeated washings she left them in our big white oval dishpan for me to wash away the
remaining sand and then later dice for our delicious vegetable soup. On our tiny plot we planted green string beans
and yellow wax beans every two weeks for a continuous harvest. Lima beans, tomatoes, carrots, beets, corn, parsley,
onions, chives, turnips, cabbages, citron, and potatoes throve in our sandy soil fertilized by bull minnows and sunfish
caught in our minnow trap.
And our bonus, fruit! We saved and pooled our pennies for dollar fruit trees, $1.12 gold, red and black bing sweet
and Montmorency pie cherries, peaches and kiefer pears. Sweet black "slivi" plums grew on trees by daddy's outdoor
workbench. Apples we grew from cores from "bought" fruit in back of the garden. Our area's wild bargains of blackberries,
black wild cherries, elderberries and mulberries were wonderful thirst-quenchers. Mother's precious gooseberries and
currents made beautiful jellies for toast on snowy city mornings. Blueberries grew like hedge plants along the side of the
yard. The canned, preserved and pickled fruits and those made into baked pies became our treat for dessert.
Daddy began growing strawberries, too. First there were two plants bought with pennies saved in a jar on the back
of the stove, but as the years passed, the two tiny plants put out runners and became a dozen and eventually a plot that
provided enough strawberries, not only for eating, but for five shelves of strawberry preserves for the winter.
We even had nut trees. There was a beautiful black walnut down by the bulkhead that kept our yard from eroding down
into the water. We had some filbert brush along the back and later actually had some pecans and almonds, but they didn't
do as well as the others.
Our ducks often laid double-yolks eggs for breakfast. The chickens were indeed gigantic and the last one became our
Thanksgiving "Turkey."
