More about Mother...

Yes, as one of my daughter-in-laws said, my Mother was an amazing woman!!!! Every summer when we went back to the farm from Western Washington Mother canned everything we grew and then some! We didn't have refrigerators or even ice boxes at that time. But our cellars were called root cellars and were literally dug out of a hill side! They stayed very cool all the time! We had pretty heavy doors on them so no outside air got in there! They had shelves, etc. but usually dirt floors and no lights where we were because as I've stated before we had no electricity! If it was necessary to go to the cellar after dark, one took a lantern. I remember my Grandfather taking a tin can (large) and putting a big hole in the side of it and then a candle was placed inside the can in the hole!! He put a wire handle on it and it worked great! We used it to go into the cellar or if it was getting dark, (not too dark) we used it to get to the funny little house with the crescent moon on the door! You couldn't read in there and still hold the candle but what the heck! When Mother canned she used 1/2 gallon jars because the family was large even then. Mmmm! How I wish I had some of those canned peaches right now! I can still see the shelves filled with all kinds of color! Red cherries, yellow peaches and of couse corn, red beets, green peas and beans, and on and on! We made our own sauerkraut using what I think they would call a mandolin today. We put this gadget which had a huge blade on it, on top of the barrel and pushed the heads of cabbage back and forth across the blade! The cabbage would fall into the barrel in strings and then every so often Mother would come in to where we were doing the "slicing" and throw a handful or so of salt into the barrel Then we would keep on slicing the cabbage until the barrel was full then a big old piece of muslin was put on top and a big rock! After a few weeks, we had sauerkraut!! We kept meat in our root cellar too and of course all the smoked things bacon, ham, etc. It was a way of life. We kept big hundred pound sacks of potatoes there and onions, squash, (Hubbard squash was the best kept!)Mother canned salmon when she could get it and of course, she make her own pickles in big crocks.
Relishes were canned as were jams and jellies. Of course we didn't have the privelege of having ice cream unless we made it in a hand-cranked freezer using ice, when we could get it and crank and crank and crank! Those were some very fond memeories of the "old days"!!!