Fall

In the fall we had great fun picking our orchard apples and harvesting in the garden. There were two old apple trees, undoubtedly planted by the Baxter family in the late 1800s. One bore very large sweet apples, which probably was a Wolf River type, in Mother’s estimation, and the other bore just nice, tasty apples. The trunks of these two trees were ten to twelve inches in diameter, so they were really mature trees. Under and around these apple trees we usually had planted potatoes (our best crop!), corn, and huge beefsteak tomatoes. A slice from a beefsteak tomato warmed by the sun and just picked would cover a whole slab of bread. What fabulous sandwiches these made with mayonnaise. Makes me hungry to think about it. It was always such fun to visit our garden with Mother, as she would get very enthusiastic about our crops. Most fun was to dig potatoes. I might be at the shovel, and Mother with a bucket was collecting the potatoes, which were invariably healthy and robust. We would both get on our knees and feel around for the potatoes. Mother would get excited and ooh and ah about their size, their ruddiness, and their abundance. “Oh, Estella. Look at THAT one! Put your hands through that loose soil and make sure we did not leave any potatoes behind! Those little potatoes are hiding,” she would say, or words to that effect. Boiling these little potatoes up for supper was a special treat, as they were so tasty with butter when lightly cooked. Our corn occasionally bore enough cobs to give us a meal. We usually had good luck with onions, too. To weed this garden we had a one-wheeled cultivator with a hoe or blade attached behind the wheel, which was about one foot in diameter. The wooden handles formed a V sprouting from the axis of the wheel. With two hands one would push this wheeled implement between the rows of crops, and it would turn over the weeds, so one could keep the space between the rows pretty weed-free without too much work.