?When I think back to the very warm days of summer, in a sense, it seems like a long time ago. October was cool and rainybut now we have had nice, sunny days in November and were able to finish most of our harvesting and outdoor work. Like our neighbor said last evening, “I’m ready for snow!” I’m not quite there yet, but getting closer.
The gardens did well, except for the tomatoes. We got enough for our canning needs but the plants quit much earlier than usual. Our highlight of the garden was the fall cabbage crop. I tried a new hybrid variety, Bobcat, and never have I had cabbages like this year. Big, solid heads, with nice outer leaves to keep them off the ground. The girls came home one day and we made sauerkraut. Gallons and gallons of it. When the fermentation is completed we’ll divide the kraut among the family. Some will be canned and the rest will be eaten right out of the crocks (warmed of course). The cabbage we didn’t use in kraut we put away for the winter. We will see if it is a good keeper.
When you stop and think, it is amazing how much food can be grown in a small area. I saw a picture in National Geographic showing a farmer in an Asian country. The caption read, “Most of the world is still fed by the small farmer.” I can well believe that. In the 1930s, when Josef Stalin ordered the people in communistic Russia to work on the “supposed-to-be-more-efficient” farms, they resisted and millions starved. After Stalin’s death Nikita Khrushchev eventually allowed the collective farm workers to sell any surplus they could raise in their home gardens. The gardens soon outyielded the collective farms. Not very surprising, is it?
As winter sets in and we devote more time to work indoors—the firewood is stacked on the porch, the canning jars are full of summer’s bounty, and the house is warm and cozy—let us be thankful.
E.K.

 

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