Chapter Nineteen-Corn (conclusion)

And corn as a supply of food was becoming evident, based on two developments. Shortly after the corn harvest started we ran out of oatmeal and cereal - no more Cocoa Puffs. And all through the fall harvest and later that winter, more people starting arriving; people we didn’t know – a couple from Bedford, a family from New Jersey, single women, single men, some older than Dad, and quite a few children. They arrived at different times and in different ways. Most walked; a few came on bicycles, a couple even still had their cars, one even came on horseback. Some looked well and brought goods with them, but many were very thin, dirty, poorly clothed for wintry weather, and carrying few belongings. Their arrival was always a cause for suspicion. Questions would go through our minds. Are these good people? Is one a thief? Are they sick? Are they running from something? Will they fit in? Do they understand our culture?
They had questions too, but in almost every instance it was the same one: Can we work for food? Harvey and Jean always had the same answer: First you eat, wash, and rest. Tomorrow, there’s work. Some would pridefully argue they should work first, all would smile. Most would express gratitude immediately; a few would be skeptical and cautious in their acceptance of the farm owners’ graciousness. All would eat, they didn’t all stay. A few chose to settle in at Crystal View, some just moved on. Some came with skills, some had none. Either way we had work for them - in the cornfields, in the barn, in the butcher house. Plenty of help to bring in the corn crop, but also to help shovel feed, move fences, fork manure, milk, cook, sew, do dishes and laundry.
With the increased number of workers, we could even devote time to woodcutting. Harvey’s furnace, Poppop’s woodstove, and the cook stove in the butcher house took a lot of fuel. Up until now they had been using the supply of firewood they had on hand and burning scrap that had accumulated over the years. That supply had reached its end. Now that there had been a frost and the cooler temperatures were prevalent, crews could venture into the woods with less annoyance from the bugs or fear from disease carrying ticks. It took some skill to chop and saw trees up, but it was one that could be learned. Even some of the youngsters could tag along and help by picking up the smaller pieces of sawed branches, stacking the firewood, or loading and unloading the wagon. The crews also spend timing cleaning up fallen branches and dead trees in the fencelines along the edges of our fields.
All these extra workers came with a few challenges, too. Where will they all sleep and use the bathroom? What about meals? Because our houses were getting pretty full and there was a concerted effort to maintain some privacy for the owners themselves, the newcomers were asked to sleep in the top of the barn. We had bedding and mattresses. Like the barn floor wasn’t already overfilled, there was no heat, and what kind of privacy could they have? Fortunately, Harvey’s barn was built in an “L” shape, so one wing was devoted to single women, the other end to single men, with families in the middle. Hay bales were rearranged into makeshift walls or pieces of the plastic from the silage bags that Larry was feeding from were hung as dividers. Small dressers or end tables, boxes or crates from the two houses were provided for the newcomers to keep their few belongings and toilet articles in. Eventually, the milking herd was housed underneath and a little bit of heat from the cows would help, but realistically, it was just like camping out in winter. Our guests needed good sleeping bags or plenty of covers, long underwear and heavy clothing, all of which we were able to find in our inventoried goods. As an added benefit, moving some things out of Jean’s upstairs kitchen made some more room for Lois’s infirmary.
There was one certainty; as expressed by Harvey and Dad in a huge sign at the barn’s main entrance with reminders at other doors. The sign said:
NO SMOKING OR FIRES IN THIS BARN
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD CANDLES
MATCHES OR LIGHTERS BE FOUND HERE
IF YOU BURN DOWN THIS BARN
YOU BURN YOUR HOME AND FOOD
No matter how cold it got that winter, the ban was never lifted. At one point the residents had learned to heat up bricks or stones at an outside fireplace, built far enough away from the barn to provide some light for bathroom trips during the night. They would then put them in their sleeping bags or under the covers like in colonial times. Harvey and Dad allowed that. Also, Barry, Uncle Bruce, and Dean installed a few car headlights in the barn to make some light during the evening and early morning.
There was a schedule made for showering, and as far as toileting, once again, the boys had exhibited some forethinking. A double outhouse had been built about fifty feet from the barn doors, right next to the manure pit. It was not only convenient for those sleeping in the barn, but also for all of us working around the farm. A lot less water to carry to the bathrooms in the houses. Also, it was ecologically sound. For instead of digging a hole and having our wastes go into the ground, the boys had designed the outhouses so the wastes would flow by gravity right into the manure tank, and then eventually be hauled to the fields to fertilize our crops.
Feeding everyone became our major concern. One of the first things was a change in the eating schedules. As soon as our number exceeded 30, meals had to be served in two shifts, your shift being determined by what time of the morning or evening you were needed at your assigned duties, like milking or dishes. I also noticed how happy the newcomers were to have milk with every meal. They might have not drunk milk for months and even though I was almost tired of drinking it all the time, it made me realize I lucky and blessed I was to have some.
As our oatmeal and cereal was gone, we had to come up with a new breakfast menu. Fortunately, the boys finally had a working flour mill built and running. They had carved two millstones from pieces of a concrete feed trough we didn’t need to have and then incredibly created a drive for it by using Larry’s hay rake in reverse. I mean, normally a tractor was used to power a nine foot wheel with six arms and tines on to rake hay. The boys hooked up a gearbox to rotate one of the millstones, hooked up the power take off shaft to the gear box, and then by walking around the hub and pushing the arms on the rake, transferred the power the opposite direction to make the millstone turn. It was rough for one person to do it alone, but two, three or even six people could hop in to drive the mill. Maybe some day they might be able to drive it with oxen or water, but at least for now, it worked!
They had successfully made wheat flour and were ready to tackle corn next to make cornmeal. That was good news at Butch’s farm; they had been smashing corn with bricks and hammers for over a month. With wheat flour, in addition to baking bread, cakes or pies, we could now make biscuits for breakfast. They didn’t need sugar, very little leavening, and were delicious with all that butter we had. They were also the perfect companion for the gravy we could make with all the meat we had, now that we had flour to thicken it. Our wheat supply was finite, so when they had mastered the art of making cornmeal, some could be added to the biscuits or used straight to make cornbread if we had some eggs to spare. The trick with making cornmeal was roasting it properly first. We accomplished this by spreading the shelled corn on cookie sheets on top the butcher stove whenever it wasn’t being used for cooking or laundry.
Roasting and grinding corn became a steady chore for several members of our crew. Of course some times the cornmeal would be cooked and served as mush, which was similar to oatmeal in consistency and served hot, often times for supper.
“I love mush,” Dad said one evening at supper, “especially with this blackstrap molasses on it.”
“Well I don’t,” I replied, “you can have your mush and your blackstrap. I can barely eat it smothered in butter. You know that blackstrap will be gone one day; we don’t grow sugar cane around here.”
“I know,” he answered, “maybe by then we’ll have some honey or trade for molasses or syrup. It’s to my advantage though, that hardly anyone else likes it, so my supply will last a while.”
“That was your theory with candy in the house, too,” Mom chimed in. “You’d buy kinds, like black licorice, that no one liked.”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “that way it would last weeks, instead of all the munchkins eating it in two days.”
“Oh, you’re the most loving father ever,” I crooned.
“You got that right,” he answered. “Now mother, if everyone has had there fill of mush tonight, it’s going to be pretty cold tonight. You can save the leftover for breakfast.”
“Of course dear,” Mom replied, “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Any leftover mush would be poured into a pan and if put somewhere cold enough, would ‘set up’ overnight. It could then be sliced into blocks and fried for breakfast. Maybe it was a little better that way; at least I could handle it, again with butter and a little pancake syrup which we had fortunately managed to conserve.
One other way we were very glad to eat cornmeal, probably never thought of by anyone in our family, was brought to us by a couple with their two sons who arrived from New York City. The parents were cooks in a Mexican restaurant and could they do things with cornmeal. Not just tortillas, which were excellent, but also other dishes with our homegrown beans, beef and pork. They were immediately assigned to the kitchen crew and were glad to be there. Their names were Benito and Rosa Diaz.
To be continued………….. Mort