October 2009

 

Fall is definitely in the air. Articles are appearing in the newspaper about winter-proofing your house, and the weatherman on TV says, “Cover your tomatoes tonight.”

 

Living in a four-season climate, as we do, there is an urgency to get it all done before the snow flies. There are gardens and flower beds to clean out, roses to protect, compost to spread, wood to get in, and boats to winterize. Winter clothes must be brought out of storage and readied for the winter blast soon to arrive.

 

Before we were even married, Pat’s goal was to live a life of self-sufficiency. And as two poor college students living in an apartment, we did as much as we could. It was when we bought our first house with a pasture and a big garden space that things got out of hand. We didn’t have a wood stove, but soon got one. In fact, I don’t know what the heat was in that house at first, but the price was right! I do know we installed a furnace, but it had to be. In the attic because most of the house was built on a concrete slab. The furnace blew cold air down on us from above, and I don’t know what it did with any hot air it was supposed to produce. Thus, the reason Pat installed a wood stove in the kitchen/dining area. Later, another wood stove was put in the living room, after we added a living room.

 

In those early days in Spokane Valley, there were lots of little farms growing lots of vegetables. Pat tells of his mother driving to the Spokane Valley from Sanpoint and filling up the car with enough fruit and vegetables to last them all winter for $5.

 

We had a big garden; the best one we’ve ever had. The dirt was full of rocks. Locals said that is what makes a good garden; it keeps in the heat at night. We grew everything, even zucchinis. We grew chicory one year because I read that it made good coffee. Wrong! I canned, froze, dried, or pickled what we grew. Pat built shelves in the one-room basement we had under one end of the house. Those shelves were full.

 

We tried to make rhubarb wine, dandelion wine, and elderberry wine. The less said about that, the better. Rhubarb wasn’t too bad. The dandelion wine I gave to Norm, the next-door neighbor. He was too polite to say what he did with it. And I was too polite to ask!

 

We planted peach, apple, and cherry trees, Marion berries, and raspberries. We planted asparagus, too, but it never grew despite our doing everything by the book. But we could harvest wild asparagus along the Columbia River above Kettle Falls, so we gave up on growing our own. There were shaggy mane mushrooms in the fall and morels in the spring. Dewberries, huckleberries, wild strawberries, and we even tried harvesting cranberries in the bogs near Priest Lake. That was a one-time thing. It didn’t seem all that safe walking out over the water with two big buckets on our feet!

 

Pat fished, and sometimes we had a deer to add to the larder. We raised chickens, Ralph, Mabel, Verdi, and Gladys. Kelly picked out the names using our relatives' names. They were good chicken names, don’t you think? We had a horse, Huckleberry; he provided the manure. Way too much manure, as the kids will attest, because it was their job to pick up the individual piles and put them in one giant pile to be spread on the garden later.

 

We drove into the national forest with a permit in hand to cut wood; the kids hated it. Maybe not the woods, but the work involved. It was a lot of work being self-sufficient. Pat was happy. He felt we were ready for winter by the time the weather turned cold. 

 

Now we grow a garden because we like to be able to have fresh tomatoes, berries for breakfast, and an occasional new potatoes and peas for supper, or a big pot of green beans and ham, such as is cooking on the stove right now. We no longer have a wood stove; it is natural gas. We haven’t picked huckleberries in a couple of years. It happens that the raspberries get ripe at the same time, and you know I have the job of making raspberry jam for the grandchildren’s winter treat.

 

Times change, that’s for sure. Being self-sufficient sounds good, but it is a lot of work. It is great for making memories of good times and good food. This time of year, though, before the first hard frost, we wonder if we are ready.

 

Are you looking for another zucchini bread recipe? This one is from The Zucchini Cookbook by Paula Simmons. The book was given to me by my daughter, Shannon, for Mother's Day 1976.

 

Bun’s Dark Zucchini Bread

 

Every Halloween, I make popcorn balls for our family. I had a hard time finding the recipe until there it was, a well-used, faded card filed under “Candy”. This year, I didn’t make the popcorn balls; I just broke them up into pieces and called it good. At least there were no burnt fingers to contend with. 

 

Bun’s Carmel Corn