Early the next morning Dad hitched Old Bob, our mule, to the cane mill and delegated Jeems to watch him and see that he walked at a steady, even gait. He hitched Old Bob to a long pole, or “sweep.” A rod had been mounted horizontally in, and at right angles to, the butt end of the sweep and a line tied to it, which ran to Old Bob’s halter. When the sweep was pulled forward, the line connected to the butt would keep pulling the mule around in a circle. The sweep turned a crusher roller in the mill, which in turn engaged another roller, forcing it to turn also. The men fed the cane in between the rollers.
The cane was fed into the mill on one side, the rollers crushed it dry, and green juice came out the other side into a trough that ran down to a covered container. From there it was taken to the boiler and poured through several layers of cheesecloth to filter it before it entered the vat. They would fill the vat to within two or three inches of the top. The vat held about eighty gallons of juice, which boiled down to eight to ten gallons of molasses.
Neighbors up and down the road gathered, eager to sample the molasses and have a good time. They brought buckets, jars, and bowls to carry home some of the finished product. As the juice boiled down they skimmed off the rich, yellow foam with wooden paddles or spoons and ate their fill as they sat or stood in groups and talked, or joined in singing, square dancing, or playing ball.
I have since learned that for hundreds of years molasses was considered a poor substitute for sugar, its pungent flavor being found unsuitable for the finer tables and the more developed palates in the land. Only wealthy people could afford the expense of sugar; the less affluent had to rely on other means of sweetening their food, such as using molasses and honey.
The early settlers in America had little choice when it came to sweetening because until the mid-nineteenth century refined sugar was prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain. Maple sugar and maple syrup were available in some areas, but by the eighteenth century most families in America used molasses in a variety of ways—to moisten their hoecakes, in baked beans, to sweeten pork dishes, and to make steamed Indian pudding palatable.
Pioneer women found that because molasses had such an intense flavor it stood up well to heavy spicing in foods—ginger in gingerbread; allspice in rich, moist fruitcake; mustard with tender baked beans; and cloves in succulent cuts of pork. Another good companion to molasses was whole grains, such as water-ground cornmeal, stone-ground whole wheat, and tangy rye, which women used to make loaves of chewy, nutritious bread.
When sugar-refining methods were developed and the price of sugar went down, more and more housewives began to relegate molasses to the category of specialty foods. In Appalachia, molasses never lost its important place on the pantry shelves. Women could be more lavish in its use in baked goods because it was made at home and therefore relatively inexpensive. It is ironic that molasses, so long out of favor with the average cook because of its humble connotations, is now much more expensive than refined sugar.
I think of autumn as stir-off days. During the summer months the mountains seem to sink in hazy sleep, their topmost peaks wrapped in blue smoke. But when fall weather comes they wake up and explode in color. During this pause between sleepy summer and shivering winter, when the nights turn cool but the sky is blue in the daytime and the sun shines warm and bright, mountain people would harvest their crops and make molasses, just as their forefathers did in the oldest of times.
Butchering Time
Memories of fall seasons of my childhood bring back thoughts of paw-paws and persimmons, walnuts and hickory nuts, potatoes and cabbages, late apples, and other delicious things to gather and eat. For us children, autumn also meant looking forward to the first snowfall and to the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
At this time of year, we would be getting ready to butcher the hogs Dad had been fattening in pens for a few weeks. The hogs ran wild in the mountains. Dad and Grandpa caught them and put them into pens to harden their fat before they were butchered around Thanksgiving when it just had begun to get cold enough. We had no electricity to run refrigerators and freezers, so the weather had to be cold enough to chill the meat.
Mama, my sisters, and I dreaded this chore. Dad usually just had a handsaw and a sharp butcher knife to cut the meat. Everything was done the hard way. Mama used a hand grinder to grind all the fat for lard and to use in sausage. She depended on the children to help do the major part of this arm-wrenching, backbreaking chore. Mama would start rendering kettles of lard, then frying the sausage before canning it. I remember all too well the feel of the greasy handle of the sausage mill and the smell of hot grease.
Since the pork sausage, chops, and tenderloins could not be kept in the smokehouse with the rest of the meat without spoiling, they were cooked and canned with lard, rendered out from the same hog. Mama would also can the ribs and backbone. It was good to have hot pork, sauerkraut, and a square of cornbread to eat on a cold winter’s day.
Dad would cure the hams, side meat, and shoulders in a brown sugar and salt brine, and then he would hang them up to smoke in the smoke-house. This was the hard way to do it, but modern meat-processing methods can never produce the flavor of that pork.
We used every scrap of the hog; nothing went to waste. Mama would make souse out of the head, cooking it until the meat fell off the bone. The pig ears were cooked tender and chopped along with the head meat. The chopped meat and broth were then mixed with fresh chopped garlic, onion, dill pickles, sage, a little vinegar, and salt and pepper. The mixture was placed in loaf pans and chilled overnight. It could then be turned out on a platter and sliced. The feet (minus the hooves) were scraped, cooked tender, and pickled.
It shocks some people when I mention some of the things we used to eat. Chicken feet, for example. Mama would chop off the toes, parboil and peel the feet, then dip them in seasoned flour and fry them. We children never fought to get a fried chicken foot, but we ate them if we were told to do so. We were never allowed to waste a scrap of food.
Winter’s Counsel
Mama and Dad were married during the Great Depression, but they knew before then that life was hard and everyone had to make do with what they had. I remember how I detested garden peas. If I ate just one or two peas, I would get a headache. It was a point of contention for a while between Mama and me, but eventually I outgrew my dislike, and today I love fresh garden peas.
There was never any problem getting us to eat what was set before us. There was no “I don’t like that” or “I’m not going to eat this” at our house—we knew we could either eat it or go hungry.
I used to think the November hills always had sad faces, and I was always glad to see December spread out a white veil to cover the mountains when winter was upon us. When the snowy days of winter file across the land of the summer’s dead, I think of gray nuns walking through an orchard counting the seasons lost while prepensely counting those ahead.
During this time of year we hear the word “season” more than any other time of the year. There is the “holiday season” leading up to New Year’s Day. We also speak of the “cold season,” the “flu season,” the “rainy season,” and others. When I was young, I felt the turning seasons of the year in my heart, and now, as I get older, I feel them also in my bones!
Hearing Colors, Making Wreaths
The fall and early winter season brings me thoughts of warm, fuzzy things. I yearn for cozy places, good books, and the company of loved ones. Nature brings a wide selection of colors in the fall, and technology brings vivid hues as the holiday season approaches.
I love the colors of things. I invite colors to drift before my closed eyes, holding each for a deep look, then sending it along to make room for others. At the same time I “hear” the colors, as if each were spoken aloud. Each color seems to have its own resonance, its own glowing health.
In school I could hardly wait for the teacher to give us pictures to color for the holidays. My favorite pictures were of Christmas wreaths.
Head wreaths became status symbols, which led to the development of ornate crowns for the elite. A crown of thorns was used when Christ was crucified as an act of ridicule and humiliation. Wreaths also became a symbol of love. An unending circle that symbolizes eternity, the wreath was used to commemorate the missing spirit at the most somber of events, funerals.
History does not tell us when the wreath as a head adornment was adapted to a wreath as a door or wall decoration. Traditionally in our country, wreaths have hung on entrance doors or over the fireplace. They seem to reflect the mood or ambience of whatever the occasion happens to be. Wreaths are used today to beautify as well as to reflect personality and color.
Barbara Power is the head of the circulation desk at the college library where I worked for twenty-four years. She and her late husband, Paul, lived in Berea. Barbara is a talented gardener, clever with needle and thread, and skilled with various handicraft materials.
One year she made a large dried wreath that she hung over her buffet in the dining room. The wreath was composed of various kinds of dried materials, including tiny pink rosebuds. When the library staff gathered at her house for a Christmas potluck, I stood for several moments, admiring the flawlessly crafted decoration.
Mountain craftspeople use dried nuts, pinecones, and other materials to make wreaths in natural shades of brown and sand, which they sell in craft shops every Christmas. One year I decided to make one just like theirs, although I was neither as skilled nor as talented as they in being able to capture the mood of the season using such items. Nevertheless, I made a wreath and hung it in my house. All through that Christmas season, whenever it was quiet and peaceful, we’d hear a sharp crack or a dull thud, depending on whether it was a nut or a pinecone falling to the hardwood floor, bouncing and rolling.
I discarded that poor wreath, and never tried to make another with nuts, pinecones, and a hot glue gun. Of course, my son Bruce has managed to introduce suggestions and comments about “Mom’s Christmas wreath” every Christmas since, warning others in the house to watch out for “Mom’s wreath” or they might get poked in the head with a buckeye or pinecone.
11
Winter’s Hunger and Cold
When winter comes the ground freezes, and all
signs of growing things are removed.
The winter months always remind me of cold and hunger. I don’t know why this should be because even in Appalachia we always had food to eat. It may have been only a kettle of pinto beans cooked with a ham bone, a bowl of fried potatoes, and home-canned pickles with a pan of hot cornbread, but it was filling, and we never went to bed with empty stomachs.
Perhaps the memory of cold and hunger has a racial or ethnic origin. Through stories and accounts handed down from one generation to another we all knew of starvation, the inability to pay rent, and being cast out into the cold by ruthless landlords.
Grandpa told me that our ancestors were forced to leave the Highlands of Scotland and go to Ireland, where they lived and intermarried until the great potato famine came, driving some of them out of Ireland, leaving them with no choice but to immigrate to the New World. When they arrived, the more accessible parts of the country were already settled and turned into towns and cities. My ancestors kept moving until they arrived in western North Carolina. They found the mountains to be somewhat similar to the land from which they had come, making it seem natural to settle there.
Eventually half the group went into Virginia and the other half came into the Kentucky mountains, where they homesteaded in the hollows and valleys with no one house in sight of another. My many-times-removed great-grandpa cleared land at the head of Stoney Fork. His children settled in hollows around him and their children did the same, until Stoney Fork was populated with Saylors.
Irish Potatoes
In the Kentucky mountains where I grew up, some farmers planted their potatoes on March 17 through swirling snowflakes, because St. Patrick’s Day was the traditional potato-planting day. Others waited until the hundredth day of the year (April 10) to put out their potatoes. I don’t know what special significance was attached to that day.
We called white potatoes “Irish potatoes” and, along with dried beans, they composed the backbone of our diet. Perhaps because of our Scots-Irish inheritance, we had an inborn love for potatoes. But then good country grub has always included beans and potatoes. Sunday dinners always featured a huge bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes, and through the week we ate potatoes boiled, fried, baked, and creamed. Our favorite potato dish was the tiny new potato that we “graveled” out with a fork early in the growing season, after which we covered the hole. Mama served them with a white sauce. Dad fussed that we were destroying his crop by graveling the new potatoes, but he always ate them as eagerly as we did.
Anytime we went on a picnic we packed Mama’s big iron skillet and some potatoes. To my way of thinking there is nothing in the world half so good as potatoes fried in an iron skillet over a campfire, along with boiled coffee.
Another favorite was Mama’s potato cakes. She would use leftover mashed potatoes, mix in one or two chopped onions, add an egg, and mix well. She fried the little round cakes in bacon grease until they were golden brown. I make potato cakes that taste like dressing by adding chopped celery, a pinch of sage, chopped onion, and an egg. Another variation: instead of patties I put the mixture in a buttered casserole dish and bake it in the oven until lightly browned on top.
During winter days and evenings when we wanted a snack, we would put potatoes in the hot ashes in the fireplace and roast them. This gave them a wonderful taste, far superior to baked potatoes. Perhaps the wood ashes and smoke were responsible for the flavor. When they were done we would rake them out, peel off the skins, season them with butter and salt, and eat them hot. When the potatoes that we had planted had matured and were dug up in the fall, Dad put them into burlap sacks, hauled the sacks to the corncrib, and spread them out to dry. Just before cold weather froze the ground he would “hole them up” for winter.
First he dug a big, round hole in the garden nearest the house. He would line the hole with straw and add enough potatoes to make a big mound above the ground. Then he put straw over the top of the mound, packing it carefully along all the edges. He covered the mound with a layer of dirt. Last of all he would put flat boards over the top, slanting them toward the ground at one end to drain off water. During the wintertime, we would dig in the side of the mound and reach through the straw to take as many potatoes as were needed.
Potatoes holed up this way kept sound and good through most of the winter. They did not shrivel or rot, although they did begin to sprout when the ground warmed up in early spring. Dad holed up cabbage the same way when we had a good crop, and sometimes apples, too, although they did not keep as well as cabbage or potatoes.
Corn to the Gristmill
Dad took our corn down the creek to Morgan Helton’s gristmill to be ground. I always begged to go with him, but usually Mama said no, because the men were apt to drink and play cards while they waited for their corn to be ground. It was awesome to me how the waterwheel turned the stones to grind the grains of corn.
Early pioneer farmers had to grind their grain by hand, with mortars or hand-stones called “quern,” until the arrival of the waterwheel in the late 1700s revolutionized the process. The first millers brought the knowledge required to build gristmills with them from England. Soon, many small towns and communities in the region had the
ir own gristmills.
The gristmills in the mountains varied in size and efficiency, even though the waterwheel was the core of every mill. Some mills had water- wheels outside the building; when they were inside they were called turbines or “tub” wheels. Buckets or troughs attached to the wheel filled with water, which spilled into the next bucket, causing the wheel slowly to turn. Wheels of this type, where the water flows from the top, are referred to as “overshot”; those using water that is carried upward from the bottom is described as “undershot.”
I learned that there were two ways of powering the mills. Logs or stones might be stretched across a stream to create a millpond. Water rushing through a controlled sluice (a boxed-in channel) in the dam passed over or under the wheel. The water turned the wheel, thus setting in motion cogs, shafts, and pulleys in the mill that powered the grinding stones. Another way was to divert water from nearby streams and channel it through pipes to the edge of the mill, then shoot it into buckets in the waterwheel.
Millstones usually came from local quarries, but a few “French bur” stones were imported from France. Two stones four feet in diameter were placed one on top of the other; the bottom stone was stationary. Halfinch grooves cut in the center of the stones enabled corn fed from a hopper down between the stones to grind the corn and pass it outward into a pulley-operated conveyor that moved it to a box ready for sacking.
Back in pioneer days, the miller would set certain “mill days” when settlers could bring in their corn to be ground. The trip could be dangerous because of the Indians, but the pioneers would make the trip nevertheless. The gristmill was both a social meeting place and a necessity.
Fire was one nemesis of gristmills, and floods were another. Some mills burned to the ground, and others washed away. Civil War armies burned hundreds of mills to deprive communities of their food. A few were rebuilt, but many were not.
My Appalachia Page 9
