This is a great photo of my great grandmother taken at my Grandpa's childhood home. For those of you who can't understand what is happening here, she is about to put all of these jars into the "cellar". The cellar is an outside building built, by my grandfather, on the side of a small hill. She canned the harvest from their garden...over 200 jars, and now will put them up for winter. Even more interesting than this, is how she preserved the potatoes. She would dig a small hole and line it with straw and newspaper. She would then layer the potatoes, straw and dirt until a giant mound was formed. This way, the potatoes would stay cool, but not freeze over the winter. When potatoes were needed, they would simply dig a small hole in the side of the mound and pull what they needed out. This was called "hilling up the tators". For those of you who are completely unaware of how people had to live during the depression, this was done because they did not have a basement or root cellar...a result of living in a tiny cabin on the side of a mountain.
My Great grandmother was a single mother. She had three boys and also a little girl who died shortly after birth. Her husband, my great grandfather was killed in a gun powder factory explosion when my grandfather was only 5 years old, and his youngest brother was on the way. From what I hear, she was an amazing woman and I plan to learn as much as I can about her before I completely lose my grandfather to alzheimers disease. Here is another picture of her, just for fun. I love this one, because I can see how much my grandpa looks like her.
2 comments:
What a great shot. And what an industrious woman. Coincidentally, my mother was telling me about her mother's prodigious canning efforts each year, and how proud she was of her cellar. She died when I was just a tot, but I remember that my grandfather had some of her filled mason jars still on the shelves in the basement, years after they had left the farm. A frugal man, I suspect he was using the contents over the years, but at a much slower pace than when they had a house full of kids.
I love the old photos. You have to understand the past to face the future.
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