The first wild flowers to appear in the spring was the tiny May flower – not to be confused with the State flower, about the size of an apple blossom was white in color and grew on a one or two inch stem popping out of the ground with the new green grass. A true artic flower it appeared as soon as the snow was off the ground and grew along the south side of the driveway along the edge of the grove. It was so fragile we never picked it for bouquets but enjoyed its beauty, as it carpeted the new grass in early spring splendor.
Sometimes in our search for wild flowers we found a violet plant that also was too fragile for picking. This plant grew in the deeper shade and made its appearance after the Mayflower. Deeper in the grove in a patch of grass was a lily like plant we called the Spiderwort. It was a purplish colored flower shaped like a lily and must have been a domestic plant at one time as it never spread to other areas as a wildflower usually does.
Another wild plant, that didn’t bloom but grew as a fern was the Tansy. This plant had a strange pleasant odor when the leaves were crushed a little and it was a useful plant in a surprising way. We carried leaves to the house and they were laid in the corners of the pantry floor and some on the shelves to repel the little red ants that could be such pests in the summer time. This plant thrived in shade and could be picked all summer long.
Another wild flower that I cannot name was a fragrant pink flowered plant that grew in profusion under the apple trees in the front yard. These could be picked for bouquets as they were sturdy plants and the blossoms kept well in a vase for several days. But when they were through blooming they were an unsightly weed and were cut down with a scythe to make the yard look neater. It never destroyed their appearance the following spring.
We searched in the grass of the school yard and another patch of native grass near by for a plant called sheep sorrel. This plant we ate, stems and leaves alike. It had a flavor much like spearmint gum so no wonder we enjoyed it. The wild onion we avoided. There were all the onions we wanted in the garden with the winter onions ready to eat about the time the rest of the garden was planted.
I think I have already told about the caraway plant that we stripped for its little brown seeds. The chaff was blown away from the seeds by sifting or shaking the seeds by passing them form one pan to another on a breezy day. The seeds were used to flavor cottage cheese or rye or graham bread.
The best plant and food of all in the early spring was the asparagus. This grew wild along the fence between the orchard and front yard or in the ditches along the road. It was ready for picking after school was out and was our first fresh green vegetable of the year, even before the garden lettuce was ready to eat. It was such fun to search for the long usually thick spears in the grass and we knew from year to year where to find the oldest plants. These had more of the spears but since the seeds spread far and wide in late summer we always found new ones. We would come home with armloads of the tender green stalks that were washed and cut up. Then cooked until tender in very little water and a thick cream sauce poured over them. A gourmet treat that cost us nothing but the fun of picking. The season was short so we ate fresh asparagus every day. The spears we missed grew into tall plants resembling the laciest fern imaginable. Later in the summer small green berries (seed pods) appeared that turned red as they ripened. They burst open and the wind or birds did a fine job of spreading the plant around in new places.
Late in the fall we found an occasional wild huckleberry. We called them night shades but that wasn’t the correct name as that plant is known to be poisonous. It was a rare find, usually growing in an old hogpen along with the milkweed, whose pods we used to stuff doll pillows. The berries were deep purple, very juicy and sweet. We never found enough for a pie so ate them from the bush. I have raised the tame garden huckleberry that looks like this plant did but the berries are inedible in a raw state. The wild berries are plentiful in the mountainous regions of Montana but may be a cousin to the plants we found.
West of the house in the front yard was a huge lilac bush, Whoever planted this beauty, set out the shrubs in a large oval and as they grew it formed a lovely shady room inside that made an ideal play house for Mabel, Esther and me. It was near enough to the house, too, so we could hear any call for errands to be run. In the spring it was so beautiful when in bloom and made pretty bouquets to carry to the house. Another smaller bush grew nearer the roads, along with a grape arbor that also made a shady room for rest or play.
Our fantastic play houses were in the south grove where the trees had been planted in even rows, four trees making a square and of course there were many of them. We would select the sight for our house and then came the job of raking away the dead leaves from the summer before, thus sweeping the floor which was the first step in getting settled in our new house. We three kids each had our own house, within calling distance of each other on our play telephones. We broke off twigs, fencing in our square, leaving an opening for a door – of course! After a windy night we might find our floor littered with leaves again so our houses needed cleaning. Our stove was a board or maybe a piece of discarded sheet iron laid over some stones, the table the same and our chair was a stump of log from the wood pile that hadn’t yet been chopped up for fire wood. A leaky kettle stuffed with a rag or a tin can was our water pail and any scrap of broken dishes served as our finest china. Baking mudpies and cakes and setting them to dry on our stone kept us busy, then we telephoned our neighbors to come over for lunch. As soon as we got bored with one location we moved. The most fun here was building and settling down. There was even a wild plant that we stripped of its brown seed. This resembled ground coffee.
As younger kids we didn’t attend Sunday School regularly but going to church every Sunday at the Lutheran church in Lake Preston was as natural as eating, unless roads and weather didn’t permit us to make the trip. Roads were just plain sticky mud when wet. Each summer tho’ we attended the Sunday School picnic. Sometimes it was held at the Lake Henry picnic grounds, one year I remember we went to a large grove in North Preston. But the one I recall with the most clarity was held at our farm. Because of an embarrassing incident, I suppose I remember it best.
Since the picnic was to be in the front yard where the dinner was served and games played, it was expected that the visitors would spend the day there or in the orchard. But a group of young folks wanted to explore so went into the south grove. I almost died of shame when I saw that a white chamber pot had been hidden behind the red shanty that stood in the trees. This building was stocked with a supply of cobs and wood for rainy days. Thinking that the pot would be out of sight there, someone had is placed it there instead of leaving it in the outside toilet where it otherwise spent its days. I didn’t stop to think that every family had and used them and maybe wouldn’t have even tried to hide it. I’m sure if there was any indoor plumbing even in Lake Preston in this early year in 1900 it would be very primitive at best. Such are the touchy feelings of childhood. In my photo album I have two snapshots taken of some of the girls who attended that picnic. At one time I could name every one but today my eyesight isn’t that good and I am sure I have forgotten the names of most of them.
Our pastor for many years was the Rev. C.M.Westermoe. He was a large man, his wife a tiny meek looking woman. They had one son named Joseph Martin Alexander, called Alex. He was our age (8 or 10 years) and when they came out to visit us we had some good times together. The Rev. liked to come in harvest time to help shock, or pitch bundles.
He was a pulpit pounding preacher who, to my young ears, preached only about our terrible sinful nature and the awful wrath of God because of it. His sermon made me tremble as I realized how bad I was and there seemed to be no way out for any of us. I really believe he spoke more about the terrors of Hell, than the treasures of Heaven. It wasn’t until later years when I studied the catechism and read for confirmation that I learned that God loved every one of us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to earth to be a sacrifice for our sins and we must believe, and have faith and trust, always. Of course we had learned of the baby Jesus at every Christmas and at Easter I knew he had died and rose again but the real story of the Gospel hadn’t registered in my mind as it should have. Rev Westermoe also confirmed me in 1921, after my freshman year.
Also during those confusing years Mr Karban used to come over to visit with Pa.
They had discussions on the Bible, especially on the Book of Revelation. Their talks were
on the Last Day, the terrible things that were going to happen, the judgment that was to
come and oh! How I shook and trembled to listen to them. They never spoke of God’s
love and forgiveness either. If I had spoken of my trouble to Ma I’m sure she would
have given me a picture of peace and joy of a life in heaven as she was a serene person
and joy and happiness was a real part of her religion.
We had our regular lessons on the catechism in Norwegian and we read from the Bible with the younger girls every Sunday after dinner – if we didn’t get to church or if it was a rainy afternoon so we couldn’t be outside. It is the greatest gift or heritage any child can receive from its parents, to learn the fundamentals of the Gospel from their teachings.
Summers weren’t all fun, of course. We had our chores to do, some I am sorry to say, done very unwillingly. As I think back, it seems that Esther and I had more time for play than Mabel and Bentena. Since the older girls were gone from home part of the time they helped with the house work, cooking, cleaning and washing clothes. That was done by hand with a washboard and tub and later in a wash machine that was powered “by hand”. That took a strong arm even tho’ the advertisement of that machine showed a woman sitting with a book, running the machine with her foot.
There were endless baskets of cobs to pick, from an endless supply it seemed. We carried a bushel basket out to the pig pen and many of those cobs had been there long enough to be coated with dirt. That made them burn slower, ma said but we liked picking clean fresh cobs much better. Then there was the wood box to fill every night and we carried many armloads of wood from the woodpile where it seems that Pa worked in his spare time, splitting the short pieces of logs that had been sawed into stove lengths. It took a lot of fuel to keep that old black cook stove going for all the cooking and baking that went on, winter and summer. No baker’s bread or cakes, no frozen pies or TV dinners to pop in the oven. The first memories I have of mother is her singing as she was cooking breakfast early in the morning. When the smell of fresh coffee reached us in our upstairs room we knew it was time to rise and shine. Another busy happy day was in store for us.
The first chore of the morning might be feeding and watering the laying hens and baby chicks. I liked this job especially and didn’t have to be told. Julius had built a nice chicken house in 1915, with many windows on the south side, such an improvement from the old dark smelly coop that had housed a few hens. Now Ma raised more hens and had eggs to sell for groceries and household needs.
Their pails of water were carried to the house for cooking and drinking. The pails were heavy but we carried one between us and if we kept in step it was easier and we didn’t spill any. A cistern by the house with a pump in the pantry supplied the water for dishes and washing. This was filled with rain water from the roof and even tho it ran through a charcoal filter it didn’t seem clean enough for drinking and cooking. It was the only available way of obtaining water on many farms because wells had to be dug very deep to hit water. It seems strange that a country abounding in lakes and sloughs should have that problem. In Pa’s Reminiscences he wrote about drilling the deep well on our farm that gave such an abundance of water.
Early in the spring we helped plant the garden and waited impatiently for the first lettuce and radishes to be ready to eat. The green peas were eaten fresh as canning vegetables in those days wasn’t too common. I can remember mama salting down green beans in stone jars and they kept fresh for a while, I suppose they were boiled first. Pickles were also made from the beans, green tomatoes sliced, carrots also, besides the cucumbers that were made into dill pickles and kept in stone jars. The root vegetables such as carrots, rutabagas, beets, turnips and onions were stored in the cellar and kept through the winter. The muskmelons we ate as they ripened, cutting up the fruit in a bowl and eating it with cream and sugar. The garden was a never ending source of work, hoeing and weeding all summer long. The favorite vegetable of all was the corn, good fresh corn on the cob, or cut from the cob and cooked and creamed. I seem to remember that some was cut from the cob, dried in the sun and kept that way for cooking in the winter time.
Pa used to tell the three of us to go in the cornfield to pull pigeon grass and sunflowers out of the rows as the corn was too tall for any more cultivating. My! What a hopeless job that was, and I don’t think we ever accomplished much. I think we got scolded too, for what little we did but at least we had a job to do and weren’t sitting around or getting into trouble, I don’t think we ever had to say “ I don’t have anything to do”.
On rainy days Ma brought out her scrap bag of quilt pieces and set us to work sewing carpet rags. Any garment that was too worn out to be used or remade was cut into strips that were sewed together and rolled into balls. When she thought she had enough balls for a strip of carpeting she took them to a lady in Lake Preston who had a large loom. They were woven into long narrow carpets, useful in any room of the house. Or the strips were braided and sewed together to make a heavier oval mat to be used by the beds or in front of a rocking chair.
Heavier pieces of material, as from coats or woolen dresses were made into quiet tops, most always in a crazy quilt design then fancy stitching was used to set off each piece. By the time winter came around again there was at least one quilt ready to put on the quilting frame with a wool batt tied inside. Every member of the family got their own quilt when they left home and it gave a lifetime of service.
Another tedious job that fell to Esther and me during the summer was to turn the grindstone when Pa sharpened the sickle for the mower. The grindstone was set over a trough that was filled with water to keep the stone wet. All we had to do was keep the stone turning by the handle fastened to the side. Turn it evenly and in rhythm so it doesn’t jerk so the blades can be sharpened smoothly, we were told. It seemed to take hours and our hands and arms got so tired. We wondered why Pa should be so particular about having those blades so razor sharp. They looked good enough to us long before he was satisfied with the job. So it was, the difference between work and play – Raking leaves or carrying water or constantly moving our playhouses maybe made us just as tired but that was our own idea of work and it was for ourselves.
Gathering the eggs every evening before supper was another job I liked to do but I was a little afraid to reach under the broody hens for the eggs because they would peck at my hands. I learned to grab their heads first and reach under them with my other hand for the eggs. When there were several hens that wanted to sit I helped Ma put them in boxes filled with hay, fifteen nice shaped eggs in each box. These hens were put in a room of the chicken house where the laying hens couldn’t get into. We covered the boxes with another boxes with another box for a day and a night (sometimes it took longer) until they knew they were supposed to stay on those eggs. If they were good setting hens the chicks hatched in twenty one days. Then the hen and chicks were moved outside to small coops and it was mostly my job to see that they had feed and water.
So the summers passed and it was time to dig potatoes. Acres and acres of them. They were dug with a potato digger, a machine pulled by one or two horses. It dug and shook the potatoes loose from the soil and then the job of picking began.
The whole family went out, each with a bucket. Saturday was a good day to start, when the kids were home from school. The first wagon load wet in the cellar by means of a chute from the end gate of the wagon, thru the cellar window into the potato bin. There had to be a supply large enough to last all winter and for seed the following year. The surplus potatoes were hauled to town where there was a ready market. I have always liked the earthy smell of freshly dug spuds but picking them was another job we kids liked to get out of.
I have almost forgotten to tell about the most important crop of all – especially to kids, which was the apple crop, or fruit crop, I should say, since there were chokecherries and plums, too. The red cherry tree that grew in the orchard was picked by the birds as soon as they began to ripen.
Chokecherries ripened around the harvest time and a good fruit year yielded many pails from the trees in the north grove. Because these cherries don’t jell when used alone, green apples were cooked and the juice added for pectin. The cherries were cooked then drained in cheesecloth bags as were the apples so the juice was clear and free from any sediment. Many glasses of jelly were cooked to perfection and juice canned for future use. Every fall a 100 lb sack of sugar was bought to be used for jam, jelly and sauce.
As apples began ripening there were bushels of them to be cooked and canned for sauce, besides all the delicious green apple pies we enjoyed. I have never since tasted an apple as good as those that we picked from the trees. The black birds liked them too and became quite a problem. They liked the red coloring as soon as it appeared on the apple. We didn’t like to bruise them when picking so were careful not to drop them either on the ground or in our pails. There were enough windfalls anyway. Some of the trees were very tall so a ladder had to be used.
Plums were the last to ripen and these too were allowed to drip from a cloth bag to get clear jelly. They could be jelled alone but we liked the flavor better if the juice was mixed with crabapple juiced. The result was a jelly so clear as a crystal rose globe that shimmered in a lonely dish when it was emptied from the glass as a good jelly should.
All the pulp from cherries, plums and crab apples was run through a colander to make into preserves that would keep in open stone jars.
Now by this time the Whitney Crab apples were ripe and must be picked very careful as they were cooked whole without peeling and made into pickles and sauce. In order to keep the apples in a firm shape without splitting their skins they were cooked over steam, then pickles were packed in the rich sweet vinegar and spice syrup and cooked in a few minutes in the jars in a kettle of water. So also with the sauce, in sugar syrup spiced with cinnamon.
There was one crab apple tree we called the banana crab as when the apples were fully ripe they were mealy, like a banana and just as good. These apples were never cooked so we had our fill of the best apples in the orchard. Being these were the last to ripen, I suppose that is why we thought them the best.
There were some large yellow winter apples that were wrapped in paper and stored on shelves in the cellar to keep until at least November.
Also in the orchard was a Juneberry thicket that yielded enough berries for one or two pies.