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Feeding a Family with Love
My Coney grandparents, Leon Josephus and Ida, and their eight living
children required quite a bit of food. They lived on a farm near
Ladonia, Texas, and raised nearly everything they needed with the
exception of flour, sugar, coffee, and a few other commodities. When I
questioned my ninety-eight-year-old Dad about how they managed to feed
everyone in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he was glad to tell me.
They farmed nearly 100 acres of land, most of which was planted in
cotton, their "money" crop. They had a very large garden that provided
them with fresh produce during the spring and summer months, as well as
enough for Granny and the girls to can many jars of fruits and
vegetables for use during the winter months. Radishes, carrots, yams,
potatoes, onions, sweet peas, okra, green beans, cabbage, tomatoes,
sweet corn, and a variety of greens were available at various times
during the year. They also grew cantaloupes and watermelons. They raised
corn for grinding into corn meal for cooking, with lots of extra corn to
feed the hogs, mules, and chickens. They had several kinds of
trees--pear, peach, apricot, pomegranate, pecan, apple, and fig--and
even had grape vines. Blackberries and dewberries grew wild along the
creek bank in the middle of their farm.
Granny made the best fig preserves I ever ate, and they were Grandad's
favorite. Granny had a footed dish made of pink crystal glass with a
cover that had a tall finial. I still have that dish, a "keepsake" from
Granny. Mary Lou, the youngest daughter, said Granny always kept that
dish filled with cooked fruit--apples, apricots, figs, peaches, whatever
she had. That was one way she had of keeping them in good health. Their
water came from a well that was dug next to their house.
They planted two acres of alfalfa for hay to feed the mules, and five
acres in other feed for the animals. When they were plowing, each mule
was fed half a bale of alfalfa hay in addition to his regular ration of
prairie hay. There was a barn for their shelter, and a large pool for
them to drink from.
Granny's "good'nun" biscuits were favorites of the whole family. She
would roll the biscuit dough out thin, spread it with butter, fold one
end of the dough over the other, and cut out the biscuits. When they
were baked, they were so easy to open, and with that taste of fresh
butter on them--yum, yum! My brother Don was the one who began calling
them "good'nun" biscuits when he was about two years old.
Grandad had been reared in Mississippi and loved the good, thick
ribbon-cane syrup that his family made from sugar cane they grew. Every
year at Christmas time, he would order two cases of gallon buckets of
that gooey, rich syrup to get his family through the year. After the
children were grown and had their own families, Grandad gave each family
their own gallon as a gift. When one of the cases was dropped at the
railroad station one year, the people standing around saw the contents.
The next year, Grandad's shipment had been broken into before he ever
got it, and two of the buckets were missing. After that, he made a trip
to Mississippi each year to get the syrup. Said he needed to visit his
relatives anyway.
Grandad raised one hog for each two members of his family. These
provided them with hams, bacon, sausage, ribs, pork chops, and lard, as
well as "cracklings" to make "crackling-bread," and enough meat scraps
to make lye soap for the laundry.
Families in the community would take turns butchering a beef animal.
Neighbors would help, then share the meat. They had to do this because
they did not have any refrigeration to keep the meat fresh, so it had to
be used as soon as possible. If one neighbor did not have a beef animal,
he traded some pork or chicken for his share of the beef.
They had a cow that gave two gallons of milk a day which furnished all
they could drink and cook with, plus butter. Of course, they had
chickens to furnish eggs, as well as for fried chicken, stewed chicken,
baked chicken--whatever suited Granny's fancy for that day's menu.
The men went fishing quite often and brought back enough fish for the
family to have a nice fish-fry as a change from their regular meals.
They grew peanuts and popcorn, too. The peanuts were pulled from the
ground still clinging to the vine, and were stored in the barn. Dad said
that sometimes in the winter Grandad would send the boys to the barn to
pick some peanuts off the vines. They roasted them in the oven and ate
them. He said they were so good. They also popped the corn for snacks.
The vines from the peanuts were fed to the mules, so nothing was wasted.
I said there were very few commodities for them to buy. However, there
was one that was Granny's weakness. She loved snuff. Grandad did not
like for her to dip snuff, so he refused to buy it for her. That didn't
stop her. A peddler made the route through that area every week selling
various items. He always stopped at their house. He had pins, needles,
thread, salt, pepper, and--most important--Granny's beloved snuff. She
traded him eggs and fresh produce for the items she needed. In later
years, after the peddler stopped coming by, Granny told Grandad that the
worms were eating her garden, and she needed snuff to dust the plants to
keep the worms off. To make her snuff last longer, she would mix it with
flour.
Keeping that large family fed was a big job, but it was one that Granny
kept filled with love.
Lowell McCormack
Gainesville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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