Sunny Tuesday!!1

Heather Helping Merrel Pick Beans

This is not the picture I was searching for but since it is the one I got and since I am going to talk about "beans" it will be OK. Yesterday was bean picking day once again and, yes, I did can beans. (not to worry, Vicky, today is YOUR day!!) I feel like the little red hen. I had to do all the snaping alone except for the last few. Merrel usually helps me but he was busy picking and mowing. Anyway, I will share this Winter even though I don't have much help canning and as I remember, the little red hen did not share!!! Our total is now 70 quarts. Not bad and we will get more if we can get a shower soon. We keep getting promises but the showers by-pass us.

Working with the beans takes me back to another time and another place and I picture a mother, a sister and myself trudging along the hot, dusty roads to a neighbor's home to spend the day helping her can her beans. My mother was one of 3 ladies in the community who had pressure canners. I am not sure how my mother was able to pay $12.00 for the canner. I remember her ordering it from Sears Roebuck. We would load the canner and about a dozen jars into our little red wagon (the only vehicle we had that had wheels!!) and the 3 of us would leave home before sun up, take turns pulling the wagon over the rocky roads,up and down the hills, sometimes walking 2 or 3 miles before we got to the home where we would work that day. We would then help pick the beans, snap them and get them ready for the jars. My mother would heat them (remember everyone had only a wood burning cook stove), put them in jars and then into the canner. We had to watch it closely as it was impossible to keep the heat at a regular degree--the more wood we put into the stove, the hotter the surface got and, yes, sometimes a canner did blow up!!! Ours never did but some folks got burned really badly when that happened. Can you only imagine how HOT the small kitchens would get and there was usually only one small window in the kitchen and no fans. Most of the homes did not even have electricity. We had none until I was 11 years old. My poor mother would get so, so hot standing watch over the stove. While that cooker was processing, the rest of us would be getting more beans ready for the next cooker. That went on ALL day. At the end of the day, our pay would be 1/4 of the number of jars we had canned that day. Usually we would go home with 10 or 12 jars of beans. It was the same distance back home as it was getting to the home that morning and usually it would be dark when we got back home. We still had the evening chores to do---milk the cow, feed the chickens, gather the eggs and fix some food for ourselves.

Now did I begin this post complaining that I had to can the beans all alone yesterday? Also did I mention that NO homes, in those long ago days, had running water. We had to draw it from the deep well and carry it in buckets to the house. Today I have a cool, very comfortable home, running water---hot and cold---, electric stove that gives off no heat except what the canner needs, I have ample cabinet space on which to work so why would I complain? I shouldn't!!! I am SOOOO blessed and I cherish those memories of days gone by.

I wish a good day to all,

Dortha