"Back in the good ol' days... "
That phrase ought to inspire instantaneous dread. "Oh god... now what?!" Generation of humans have uttered those 4 words of dread every time some old toot starts repeating a familiar event from decades back in their lives. The catalyst on this occasion was "... did your mom ever do any canning or making of jam when you were young?" Well as a matter of fact (not embellished; altered only by faulty recollection)...
My mother may have done some canning but I was too young to recall these 85 years later. The good news was she had at least 2 relatives who had a passion for preserving food. My maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather were into it. Both had access to the raw fruit and veggies and both were the sort of people that were driven to be prepared for the worst. That sort of thinking was no doubt encouraged by having lived through the 'great depression' of the 1930s (Hmm... is this 'de ja vu' all over again'?).
Here's a tale of 2 people in my life who 'put food by'.
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| A pirated photo of someone having fun canning jam using a 'water bath' |
Violet Mary (Mae) Walsh Ross was confined to a wheel chair as a result of having contracted polio. She was very possibly exposed to the virus while attending the World Exposition of 1939 on Treasure Island. However it came about, the following year she was paralyzed from the waist down. Well... she could tap the toes of her left foot when she was impatient or aggravated.
Instead of giving in to the nightmare of having her movements limited by the wheel chair, she took on a roll of attacking problems and either fixing the problem from her wheel chair or managing someone else's help in getting the solution. She was a force to be reckoned with. Sweet as could be, just don't piss her off!
She and my grandfather Lewis Edward Ross lived in a large 3-bedroom wood frame house in Lockeford, California. There's a photo of the house elsewhere here in the blog. The house faced state highway 88 so there was lots of traffic. That traffic passed right through some of the richest farmland in the US. So Lockeford was a farming town in the Central Valley of California. In my recollection it was a time when preserving food from the growing season for consumption during the non-growing months was part of surviving. Mae couldn't handle all the produce that might need preserving (for one thing she couldn't get into the cellar any longer), so she limited herself to canning fruit, jams & jellies.
A standard height kitchen counter was just below shoulder height from her wheelchair. So she often worked by resting a board or pan on her lap and handled food from there. She did all the cooking in the Ross house plus the dish washing, so canning was just another variations of what she had staked out as her turf. And the cooking chores were in addition to running the switchboard- the Ross home was also the location of the Pacific Bell exchange which uniquely interconnected the 'farm lines' with the Bell system.
A big issue for Mae with canning was getting food-filled jars in and out of the canning pot (the 'water bath'). Being in a wheel chair limited how tall the pot could be and still be able to see/reach in to place or retrieve the canning jars. Canning pint or quart sized Mason jars was out as they required a deeper water bath pot. But she could deal with Cup-sized jars which pretty much limited her canning to jams & jellies.
Mae's yard had blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries and at least one cherry tree (plus who knows how many other decorative plants, bushes & at least one walnut tree). She dispatched the handy grandchild, husband or neighbor to harvest fruit and she took over from there. My grandfather Lewis (Lew; recall that he owned and operated the Lockeford Grocery) was given the appropriate list of essentials. Mason jars, lids and rings plus wax and sugar. Lots of sugar. That's what I recall but there must have been other ingredients too. The wax was for sealing small containers like Mae was able to use, but if the jam or jelly was to be mailed (gifts) then she had to use the single-use lids with the screw-thread ring. The rings were removed for re-use; the vacuum sealed jar was ok without it.
I recall that the cooked jam was ladled into the 1-Cup sterilized & preheated jars, the jars placed in the water bath. After the appropriate time in the water bath the jars came out, the sealing lids were placed on top, and the ring screwed onto the jar. Not super tight; the vacuum created the seal- not the ring (alternately the previously melted wax was poured over the top to about 3/8" thick). After the jars cooled the rings came off each jar and the lids was tested by tapping it with a spoon. If the jar hadn't sealed it gave a 'thunk' sound instead of the appropriate ringing sound when tapped with the back of a spoon. The wax seals didn't get tested- just cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Mae was a great cook. I recall special occasion dinners like Thanksgiving or 4th of July where a special dish was required- like turkey at Thanksgiving. It was always a big production and there were countless side dishes. Being confined to the wheel chair meant that help was needed and there was never a lack of volunteers. And she kept them all hopping till the food was on the table.
And btw, Mae was also the main operator of the Pacific Bell switch board located at the front of the house.
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About 15 miles roughly South of Lockeford in the city of Stockton where my paternal grand parents lived on a 2.5-acre 'farm'. I've talked to co-workers who grew up in the mid-west who scoffed at a 2.5 acre farm; they said a farm isn't a farm unless it's at least a quarter section (160-acres)*. If you were in the Bowman family, however, 2.5 acres qualified.
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| John Oscar (Pa) after he had moved back to Buffalo, Wyoming (abt. 1960) |
John Oscar Bowman (I called him Pa- short for Grandpa) had been a grocery or trading store manager most of his adult life. When his job as a Safeway store manager went away during the depression he tried a few things including real estate sales. At about age 50+ he started working his farm property as a commercial enterprise where he raised chickens for eggs and for meat. Plus he farmed a full range of vegetables including corn, cabbage, root vegetables, squash. He also raised fruit such as grapes, apricots, peaches, almonds and walnuts and of course watermelon (ever had canned watermelon rind?). He did everything from preparing the soil to harvesting and preservation. Preservation meant canning and even smoking (with fumes from burning sulfur) then sun drying apricots. He sold eggs to local grocery stores as well as shelled walnuts and almonds, whole fruit, and some of the vegetables. He canned or preserved produce not as a hobby gardener but rather for what he needed for himself and my grandmother Ida Frances Penn Bowman to live on out of season.
JO knew only one way to work. When we had to scrub the floors of the barracks in Marine Corps boot camp, the drill instructor would say 'I only want to see assholes and elbows!' That was kinda the way JO worked. It was as though his life depended on it; and the reality was that it very much did.
My paternal grandparents never went without the basics for food, clothing and housing but it was not a trivial effort. When he finally said he was done (retired), he and Ida sold the 'farm' and moved to a 3/4 acre lot on the California coast in Santa Cruz. Then he did the same thing he was doing in Stockton except it was a couple acres smaller.
Like Mae Ross, JO did jams, jellies and preserves plus he also tackled canning vegetables and a few multi-ingredient veggie things like spaghetti sauce & relishes. The bigger things that survived in a cool dark space were stored in the cellar- probably squash & potatoes. And the cellar was a good place to store the canned goods he had prepared (I had to take his word for it as I was not allowed in the cellar).
Harvest time was incredibly intense. He was up at dawn to feed chickens then start the day. He'd harvest veggies then bring them back to the house where he prepped and cooked them, got the canning jars ready, sterilized, added the cooked veggies, did the water bath, sealed the lids and moved on to the next batch. It was intense. My grandmother Ida was part of it as well helping here and there. Mostly it was a one man show the way Pa did it.
I never saw a book in the house related to canning or preservation of harvested foods but it must have been there somewhere. He knew what he was doing but it wasn't something he grew up with. His father John Jacob Bowman had been a commercial baker and didn't grow vegetables or fruit. And JO's time as a shepherd certainly didn't allow exposure to farming. So it must have been something he got into when the Bowman's moved from Arizona back to California and eventually to the Central Valley.
One last thing: yeah, Pa shopped at the grocery store but I recall it was for specialty items he wasn't able to do himself for lack of time. Like baking bread. His bread was better but there just weren't enough hours in the day. And buying bread was a flexible option- I recall he could throw together biscuits in a matter of minutes then cook them in the covered iron skillet on the gas stove top. He used Bisquick for the biscuits but never failed to mention that he made biscuits from scratch when he was herding sheep (I guess Bisquick hadn't been invented yet; or if it was the outfit he worked for didn't spend the $$). Like Mae, Pa was an excellent cook regardless the occasion or the dish.
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* Nerdy stuff: a 'section' of land is a property which is exactly a 1 mile square, i.e. dimensionally 1 statute mile by 1 statute mile. Since 1 mile = 5,280 ft, a section, then, is equal to 1 sq mile which is equal to 27,878,400 sq ft; and a quarter section is variously-
- 6,969,600 sq ft
- 0.25 sq miles
- 160 Acres
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