Remembering the Bountiful Harvests

Last week I read some scripture which reminded me of my days as a boy growing up on our farm. The passage was from Leviticus 26, “I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you have to move it out to make room for the new.” I’m sure people still plant gardens and can vegetables, and maybe raise beef cattle to slaughter for their meat. I remember when almost every farm family worked hard during the growing season to secure all the food that they would need for that year. And most would have enough to share, still having enough food left over when the next harvest was put away.

The gardens were large, filled with every kind of vegetable imaginable. Many of the ladies would plant flowers along the outer edge of their garden so that they could have a nice bouquet throughout the summer. In the late spring my mother would meet several other of the neighborhood women at one of the farms, and they would kill chickens. That was an all day event. The chicken’s necks were wrung, then the dead chickens were dunked in boiling water, and their feathers plucked. Next was the process of gutting, washing and bagging the birds for the freezer.

The men would kill hogs when the weather was cold enough. There were usually several men as well as their wives, in some cases, to pull off the task. As with the chickens, the hogs had to be prepared before processing the sausage, that delicious tenderloin, and all the rest of the pork from the pig. The fat was tendered for lard. Even the brains were harvested for consumption. I never ate any pig brains, but my dad loved them. Just about every part of the hog was used. The saying on the farm was,”We kept every part of the pig except it’s squeal.”

Every farmer killed and butchered all the beef the family ate. Eggs were gathered every day, and those that were not used were sold. Cows provided the milk. In our community there was a man who raised large fields of strawberries. We would pick enough for my mother to freeze and enough so that she could make all the strawberry preserves that we needed for the year. I would give anything for a jar of her strawberry preserves. We picked blackberries in the summer. There were several walnut trees on our farm. We were blessed to have plenty of good food to eat, food that we grew and harvested ourselves.

As that Leviticus passage said, most farm homes had food left from the past year when they harvested the new. Some had canned food from three or four years that they hadn’t eaten. Our nation has changed. There are not nearly as many people raising their own food today. I guess that is alright, but I think it is somewhat sad that the days of planting, caring for the crops, and the harvesting are fading away. City living prevents us from doing these things anyway. Can you imagine what would happen it someone in a subdivision tried to ring a chicken's neck today. That person would probably be arrested, and kept in jail for a year. I just hope I don’t get in trouble for writing this piece.