2 hours ago, gfron1 said:Funny that you ask @ElsieD. One of the things that is obvious that finally clicked for me on this trip was the volume of the recipes. Most fruitcake recipes total about 20 pounds, and same goes for most of the canned products. I don't know why but it took me until this trip to realize that they were canning for the year or season, so of course they were massive amounts. So what's even more impressive to me about these cooks is that I never have enough space for canning in my commercial kitchen. I can't imagine canning on a woodburning stove in a tiny homestead. They probably did it outside, but still...
I can address that, a little. The kitchen in our house where I grew up was quite small. Countertop centered with double sink on one wall. Maybe 36 inches of counter on one side of the sinks, maybe 18 on the other. Door to the back porch in perpendicular wall to left of counter. Stove and fridge, both freestanding, on perpendicular wall to the right of the counter, door to hall in perpendicular wall to its right. Kitchen table, sitting in front of recessed shelves in area where the flue for the wood stove used to be, behind it, took up the remaining corner of room.
We would can every summer about 80 quarts of green beans, 100 or more quarts of pickles, 100 or more quarts of tomatoes in various forms, and that many pints of assorted jellies, jams and preserves as well as whole and cut-up fruit. We'd freeze 150+ pints of cut-off corn; 100+ pints of purple hulled peas; lesser amounts of lima beans, butter beans, butter peas, and pinto beans. We'd prep and dry probably 50 pounds of apples, and 50 pounds of peaches. (The freezer lived on the back porch, at first, and then in the basement after we added onto the house.) We'd make crocks of sauerkraut, and can 20 or 30 quarts of it. We'd cut, bread and freeze okra. We'd can new potatoes, and carrots. Apples, onions, and potatoes went in boxes in the basement, nestled in hay (in the smokehouse, which was immediately behind the back porch, pre-basement).
In the smokehouse, by early December, there would usually be four hams, several slabs of bacon, and several links of sausage hanging. We did either freeze or can some of our sausage fresh, and froze pork roasts, chops, etc. We'd usually get a calf back from the slaughterhouse, broken down and packaged and frozen, in early November.
All the prep work except for the hog butchery, which took place at a neighbor's farm, was done in the 36--inch counter space to the left of the sinks, which was cleared of anything else. (The 18-inch counter to the right of the sinks was sacred to the coffee maker, and held the dish drainer. Neither of those ever moved.) Finished products went on the kitchen table, one of those now-classic green and white formica ones, until they got moved to the back porch or recessed shelves, or later to the basement.
Most of that would take place over a two-month period in July and August, though there'd be late plantings of both peas and corn that were harvested up until late September, and some of the fruit was earlier, some later. Some things, like corn, would come in all in one big swoop; others gradually, over a four-week or longer period. But we'd can or freeze at least three days a week, and often more. In between there was harvesting, prepping (snapping beans, shelling peas, cutting off corn), all mostly done outside.
House wasn't air conditioned. When we'd be canning in August, Mama and I would throw a No. 2 washtub into the truck, go to town and get a 50 pound block of ice for something like 50 cents. We'd put it in the kitchen on spread-out newspapers and turn the fan across it. Then Mama would threaten to kill me for sitting on the edge of the tub and blocking the cool air. When we added on to the house we bricked it, and it was so much hotter we had to get air conditioners.
