Chapter Eighteen - Preserves

As we headed into October, the corn and soybean harvests were just weeks away. Vegetable harvest was winding down, however. Poppop’s potatoes were ready for digging, but that first necessitated another construction project. Harvey’s farm lacked a decent ground cellar, where potatoes could be stored in a constant temperature and remain unspoiled for months.
It was another job for Harvey’s backhoe. A bit of thinking was put into the decision as to the location of the ground cellar. At Joe’s insistence, the cellar needed to be high enough to hang a slaughtered beef in, to cool down the carcasses in the summer and to keep them from freezing in the winter. The location had to be somewhere where the ground level was naturally higher, so Harvey could still dig deep, but not so deep as to have groundwater or runoff water be a problem.
They decided on the north side of Harvey’s house, which had a heavy stone wall. Most of the year, the ground cellar would be in the shade, helping to moderate the temperature. There was even a crown at that side of the house, enabling Harvey to excavate the opening as a gently sloping ramp, making it easier to carry a side of beef, a hog or the potatoes into the cellar. Also, just outside the opening was a stout tree that Joe said we could us to hang up the beef to skin and clean it before hanging it in the ground cellar. When Harvey was finished digging, there was a tremendous pile of ground in the yard.
“What are you going to do with all that dirt?” I asked Harvey.
“Oh, I need every inch of it,” he answered. “I might even go find some more to make the roof as thick with ground as I can.”
“What’s going to keep the roof from collapsing?” I inquired.
“Remember last week?” Josh replied, “when we cut down all those trees on the other side of the meadow. They’re not for firewood, although all the branches we shaved off the main trunks can be burned in Harvey’s furnace. We’ll lay the cleaned up poles across the hole, pretty close together for strength. They’ll be supported by the unexcavated soil on three sides, except where the door is. On the side next to the house wall we’ll support them with some heavy metal poles Larry had laying out back. We found some two inch thick planks from one part of the barn floor that we don’t need because we no longer need to drive heavy tractors there. We will lay the planks across the trees and then cover the whole business with ground.”
“What kind of door will it have?” I asked.
“One that’s real thick; one that a little kid like you will hardly be able to open.”
“Who you calling a little kid?”
“You, compared to the door I built. I had plenty of lumber. I made it twelve inches thick with an eight inch space in the middle, where we stuffed straw and some of the insulation from Jean’s stove. You know the one we took apart to make the oven?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“One big chore remains,” he continued.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Framing the door will be a challenge, and then filling in the space between the door and walls with something to keep the cellar as insulated as possible. Don’t worry, we’ll get it.”
And get it they did. It was quite a cooperative effort. Might have been ten men working on it at a time. The finished product looked good. They had screwed some hooks into a few of the tree trunks to hang meat from, and even built some wooden bins to keep the potatoes in. But potatoes weren’t the first thing to be stored in the cellar. We had quite a bit of rain for a couple days, making Poppop’s potato patch way too wet to plow. So we went at harvesting apples instead.
There was a large orchard about five miles north of us. Joe was good friends with the owner. Every year Joe would cut up some of the apple trees that were being culled for his smokehouse. Joe had always maintained that apple wood was the best for flavoring his smoked meat products. On yet another trip with the mo-ped, he had met the owner and we were welcome.
It was the Friday before the planned communion, when we went on our apple picking excursion. Brutus was out of the picture this time. We used Larry’s pickup to pull a wagon stacked with baskets and buckets for the apples. There were six bicycles on the pickup, three ladders, and one hog. We picked up ten pickers from Butch and Clare’s, including Ben and Robbie. I think that made thirty of us in all, so it was more like a wagon full of people.
When we reached the orchard, we found quite a gathering there. We weren’t the only ones who wanted to harvest apples. There must have been two hundred people there, but looking around, I estimated there might have been five thousand trees. Apples for everyone; so I thought. Quite a few people must have been there earlier in the picking season, for all the trees near the buildings were bare. The crowds of pickers were near the top of the hill, way to the back of the orchard. So up the hill we went, looking for apples. Not a problem, there were rows of unpicked fruit for the taking. We unloaded the wagon and the bicycles, and then Joe and Larry took the hog to the owner for his family.
Picking apples isn’t hard, sorting them is a different matter. We put the firmest, nicest looking apples in the baskets and the rattier looking ones, especially if they had brown spots or were getting mushy in buckets. Poppop even picked drops off the ground. Because of all the rain we had, some of them were pretty bad, but this wasn’t the year to be wasteful.
The other people there were friendly. In fact, I believe Dad knew many of them. There were a couple families from church, so we informed them of the communion Sunday. Actually, Dad told everyone they were welcome and not to worry if they had no food for the dinner; they should come anyway.
“Not a problem,” one young woman answered, “we got plenty of apples, a Dutch oven and plenty of flour. I’ll bake a giant pie.” That sounded good, but divided amongst four or five hundred people, we’d all get a pretty small portion. No matter, if she could do it, so could Jean.
We started loading buckets and baskets onto the wagon. It was full in no time. It took quite some doing to stack them, so there would still be room for the harvesters. Of course, Josh, Jake, Dean, Jennifer, Aaron and I intended to head home with our bicycles. Seemed like a much better option than being crammed into a wagon with buckets, baskets, and people. Once again, some preplanning had paid off.
Just before we left, I noticed Poppop and Jeremiah coming back from a different part of the orchard, each with two buckets. They had found the peach and pear sections. It being past the normal season for them, the pears were very soft and spotty. Similarly, the peaches were already shriveled up.
“What are you going to do with them?” Jake asked. “They look awful.”
“Oh, I have a couple ideas in mind.” Poppop answered, “You’ll see.”
Jennifer, the boys and I started down the road. It was a beautiful drive; the road followed the winding creek that later on downstream our little creek flowed into. It was surrounded by lush wooded ridges, just now starting to show fall colors on a tree here and there. We traversed some of our hunting areas. Josh pointed out where he had shot a turkey, where Dad had shot one, and Jake had shot his first buck. This was to be my first year of hunting and I wondered out loud where Dad would take me.
“Well,” Jake said, “I overheard Jeremiah and Dad talking about hunting the other night. The consensus was that we didn’t need to go hunting this year. First, we had enough meat right now. We should let the herd grow; save it for when we need it or if other people need it. Besides, we only have so much ammunition.”
“I could still use the bow,” Josh replied. “I can use the arrows more than once.”
“And probably make some, if you had to,” Aaron added.
“I suppose so,” Jake agreed and then said to me, “but it looks like you won’t get hunting this fall, unless we have to take care of some varmint problems. You really haven’t practiced much either; that takes precious ammunition, too.”
I had been practicing, but not with live ammo. I just practiced holding the gun, aiming, pulling the trigger, and bolting the next round in. But I guess I’d have to wait a couple years until I got my chance.
When we were about half way home, the rest of the crew passed us, waving and jeering. That pest, Robbie, even made a face at me and waved real nice at Jennifer. That boy might need some straightening out one day.

To be continued… Mort