8.2 Food on the Table, Part 2

Frances and Irvin Whelan always had a garden. In Kansas wherever there was a speck of space, Irvin got his shovel to ready it for planting seeds. When they moved from Kansas to Flora, Illinois in January, 1942, they rented a house on the edge of town. The big back yard was an attractive feature. As soon as the ground thawed, Irvin had his shovel and spading fork busy. When he got home, after putting in a full day laboring in the oil fields, he spaded large portions of the back yard, working until darkness compelled him to stop. 

He soon had it all turned over, except a strip along the sidewalk wide enough for a clothes line. With five-year-old and two-year-old girls, neither he nor Frances were too concerned about a play area. After all, there was also a big front yard. 

Irvin put up a fence for a chicken yard at the back of the property as quickly as he could. There was a building already in place, half of which served as a dwelling for the chickens when they were big enough to be outside in March. The other half provided storage for coal that would fuel the stove that heated their house during the winter.

That first year they lived in Flora, the garden might have been somewhat sketchy, but rows of corn, beans, beets, tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage were sure to have been planted. Lettuce, onions and spring peas were other favorites. World War II was underway, with the rationing that created hardship for everyone. People felt responsible to sacrifice whatever was needed to support America's war effort.

The following year, 1943, when I was six years old, I remember that Daddy laid out a four-foot square with left-over fence posts. I spaded (dug with a big spoon) up the area as I joined 20 million other Americans and planted my 'Victory' garden. Now, I suspect Daddy had a lot to do with the soil being properly turned over. But at the time I just relished the little specks of green as they peeked above black dirt I felt I had excellently prepared. My lettuce, onions, carrots and radishes not only made me feel like I was helping to feed the family, but I was also serving our country. It was a heady feeling for a little girl. 

I checked that garden's progress every day, and harvested each vegetable as it grew big enough. Daddy kept a close eye that I didn't get too anxious.

Two lots adjoined the property where our house was. No one used them and they just sat there, seemingly without anyone to care about them. I was about seven when we decided to dig a pond on the front lot. We had visited Granddaddy and Grandma Whelan and had played in their pond. That experience, along with Saturday afternoon cowboy movies, was all the inspiration we needed. 

With the neighbor children, we made hideouts in the blackberry bushes growing wild on the lots. Tunnels connected one secret place to another. A pond was exactly the embellishment our cowboy landscape needed. So we began. Mom must have loved that pond. We dug and dug and dug until we had a circular hole about five feet across and twelve to eighteen inches deep. We worked on it for a good part of the summer. Finally we deemed it worthy of filling with water. We had thought rain would do the job, but that summer brought no rain. Just outside the back door was a pump that Daddy had gotten in working order to water the garden. Water from the faucet had to be paid for and was for drinking. Pump water was not for drinking, but it was free for the pumping. So we filled buckets to water thirsty plants, and now we would pump enough to fill our pond. We located every bucket we could find throughout the neighborhood, and worked an assembly-line effort. We pumped and carried water, and pumped and carried water all afternoon long. 

No one had ever mentioned that the water would soak into the very dry soil as fast as we poured it in the hole. Finally we got enough water to stand and cover the bottom no more than two inches deep. We jumped in our pond. I don't remember how deep the mud at the bottom was, but the sight of us when we came out was enough to make Mom awfully mad. She hosed us down and then made us all take a bath and wash our hair. It wasn't even Saturday night!

We tried, several times, to fill the pond, but it was not to be. Since we were forbidden to jump in, the romance soon faded. Our repeated attempts ended with the start of school and that big hole yawned from the middle of the lot until the following spring. When one of Daddy's friends offered to come plow his garden, Daddy was delighted. He took a second look at the empty, unused lots. He had no idea who owned them, but no one ever shown any interest in them at all. So Daddy let his friend plow the entire area. Ignoring unused, plantable acreage just wasn't in Daddy's makeup. In one fell swoop, his garden space quadrupled. And the pond disappeared. Years later he laughed as he recalled how long he worked to level out that low spot in the garden.

A year or two after Daddy expanded his garden, Mr. Kinneman, a neighbor, called Mom. The out-of-town owner was at his house. He wanted to sell the two lots, and he wanted to sell them immediately.

By this time Mom and Daddy had already bought the house they lived in. Mr. Kinneman asked Mom if she and Daddy had ever talked about buying the lots. He said he would loan her the money if she needed it. I don't remember the price of the two lots, but Mom went immediately to the bank and cashed enough war bonds to pay for them in full. When Daddy got home that evening, he worked in a garden planted on land he owned -- thanks to Mom's quick action. 

The additional space allowed him to plant enough corn to feed the chickens, and the hogs he raised. They were kept at a neighbor's barn up the road a piece, and Daddy walked up there every evening to feed and water his animals. Hogs can be profitably grown for the home meat supply in every part of the country. Hogs reproduce faster and in greater numbers than any other meat animals and most efficiently convert grain and other feeds into edible meat products. In addition, a sow might bear 10, or more, piglets. Once the piglets were weaned, one shoat would be marked for fattening with the goal being to provide meat for the family. The extras were sold to people also interested in producing their own meat supplies.

Butchering day was an exciting event. Men in the neighborhood gathered to help each other, and the women cooked lunch. Everyone had a good time, in spite of the hard work. Everything had to be completed as quickly as possible. The prevention of meat spoilage and also the foundation of quality meat begins with the handling of the live hog. For this reason the wise thing to do is to practically start curing the meat at the time the hogs are killed—which, of course, means to do every step in the butchering and curing job properly. As soon as the weather was cool enough the hog was killed and the carcass scalded and scraped. Strict attention to cleanliness in handling the meat, the proper tools and equipment are all very important. 

Tools were most often shared by the men who took part in the process. Properly fattened hogs, weighing from 180 to 250 lbs. and from eight to ten months old are the best ones for home butchering. For an excellent onlin treatise on the art of butchering check out this web page: How to Butcher Pork.

I remember the activity, the hog carcass being lifted on a hook and dipped into boiling water. A big fire in the back yard kept water ready and hot in a huge cast iron pot. The hog would then be dressed into hams, shoulders, pork chops, bacon, roasts and a huge pile of pieces. These scraps were separated into fat and lean pieces. Fat was cut into units one to two inches each. Use of the big pot of water was finished by now and it was emptied. The pieces of fat were now heated in the big pot positioned over the fire.

The neighbors have picked up their tools and gone home. Mom is in the house grinding the lean pork into sausage. Daddy got the stirring paddle and instructed his seven-year old daughter (me) on the intricacies of heating fat pork to the right temperature for transformation into lard. I was to stir slowly back and forth and call when the color changed. We heated six pots of fat exactly right for Daddy to run through the lard press. By now the sun was going down and darkness was increasing, but Daddy thought we could finish the last pot. He loaded it up and I started my slow stirring while I watched carefully. Don't you know I didn't discern the color change, and the fat was scorched? Daddy was fussing, and I was crying when Mom came out. 

"Never mind," she said. "We will make soap out of this batch." Home-made soap during the war years was a fairly common happenstance. Our soap that year was a decided tan color.

We finished up, and Daddy did admit that we shouldn't have tried to do that last pot when it was so dark.

I can't forget the cracklings. Absolutely nothing tastes better than warm cracklings fresh out of the lard press. Daddy broke a piece off each flat he pressed, and we crunched away. Later, Mom would make her unimpeachable crackling corn bread. I have never tasted any that came close to rivaling what she made. It's the only corn bread I have ever liked crumbled in milk.

Then we went in the house where Mom had big pans full of fresh-ground sausage. Daddy added his special seasoning that included salt, pepper and sage, for sure. Maybe other spices as well. Now Mom fried up that first skillet of fresh sausage patties, and we all marveled at what a good day we had had.