Molasses in January, No...June!

 As a child I was raised on a big dairy farm on a hillside in a small town in central Vermont. It was truly an idyllic time as I look back.  Even at the time it seemed really good to me.  We had lots of land to roam over, fresh air, lots of farm kid responsibilities/work such as feeding calves and cleaning out the barn.  As we got older we moved into more  heavy work like haying and stacking bales.

Our father was a rather innovative man.  He had been raised on a dairy farm and went to the Vermont School of Agriculture to get a modern education.  He had only finished one year when his own father died.  He came home to run the family farm.  Eventually he married our mother and began to acquire more land and more cows.  Mostly the cows were Jersey cows but later on he had some Holsteins which increase the quantity of milk we shipped every other day.

In about 1954 he built two new 100-foot barns.  One was a free-stall barn which had a manger down the center and stanchions on both sides  with corridors behind the cows for cleaning/scraping out with a Farmall Cub tractor.  There was a concrete floor in the feeding shed just described and across a barn yard was a second 100-foot barn which was a loafing shed and had a dirt floor where the cows would go after eating in the winter.  They were under cover and happy there.  In summer they were turned out into the fields where they were a pretty picture.

The first driving any of us kids did was on the Farmall Cub!  The boys got to clean out the feeding shed with scraper attached.  I only drove the tractor around in the barnyard for fun. I did not get much time on it, as I recall.

Above the mangers in the feeding shed was a row of square openings about 3 feet square, big enough to throw a bale down.  Under the opening was a slot where flat doors were placed so they could slide open and shut.  There was a little more than 3 feet between the holes so when the doors were slid into place there was a ceiling above the manger.  In the summer time the doors were left open for air-y-ness.  In the winter the doors were closed all the time except when the hay that was stored in the haymow above the manger was thrown down the holes to feed the cows.

Always concerned about the cow's health, our father, for a period of time, obtained blackstrap molasses in 55-gallon drums and poured it over the hay in the manger.  The cows loved it! The drums were stored upright in a section of the barn but when it was time to draw off the molasses into a pail to pour over the hay, the barrel was placed on a scaffold-sort of thing...more or less of a triangular cradle. There were two holes in the tops of the barrel that you slid open with your fingers.  When the barrel was lying horizontally in the cradle the small "hole" was at the bottom and was turned open so the molasses would drip out into the pail placed beneath the opening.  The larger hole was to allow some air into the barrel so the molasses was able to flow more smoothly.  

You will all have heard the expression: "slower than molasses in January".  Well, when molasses is cold, as it would be in January in Vermont, is is very viscous and does not flow well.

In June it is another story altogether!

One day in the summer when I was probably around 10 or 11 years old I was in the milking parlor where my mother was helping my father with the milking.  My father sent the hired man  out to the feeding shed to get the buckets of molasses ready to spread onto the hay.  I wanted to go watch so my mother and I went out to the feeding shed to watch the process.  

LW got the pail and placed it under the small hole and turned the "knob".  Nothing happened.  I remember clearly  him turning to look at me with a big smile on his face. I must have asked him what the problem was.  I was leaning down more or less over his shoulder watching.  Well, that son of a gun probably knew what was about to happen.  He opened the "bung hole" on the top then opened the air vent. Out flew a huge flood of molasses!  Straight at me!  I was drenched with that black gook.  My mother immediately took me into the milking parlor and sprayed me off with the sprayers my father had created for each stanchion so he could easily wash off the udders of the cows before milking them.

The milking parlor hose only did a little job so Mother took me outside, stripped me down, and used a garden hose at the end of the barn to get more of the molasses off then sent me to the house to take a bath and completely remove the molasses from my body and hair.

To this day I cannot abide stickiness.  Of any kind, not just molasses!

Also, I recall not being impressed by having to run naked or at least nearly naked from the barn to the house, a not insignificant distance when you are a modest child.  Maybe that killed some of my modesty, now that I think of it...

The Iron Pot

 The Story of the Big Iron Pot

The Royalton (Vermont) Raid took place on 18 October 1780.  The previous link gives an overview of the Raid.  Zadock Steele, a young man living in Randolph, became one of the prisoners.  He, in his later years, wrote the story of the Burning of Royalton which he entitled "The Indian Captive".  As a child in the sixth grade where we studied local history with Mrs. Bird, we read the story that Zadock Steele wrote. This was such an exciting story, one we kids always loved to hear.

Several times during my growing up years, there was a pageant on the high school ball field where the Burning of Royalton was dramatized.  To this day I can hear the screams of the women and see the painted faces of the Indians.  Very memorable... 

Where our family comes into the picture is that in the early 1800's members of our family came into possession of the property which was the second place the Indians entered that early morning in October 1780, the home of Robert Havens across the river from the Hutchinsons.  Quite a few years ago I was researching the deeds of property of that parcel in the Town Clerk's office.  I traced it back to 1830 before I had to leave for the day and never got back to go all the way to Robert Havens.  Sad.  There were several different families, all connected to us, though not our surname, who owned the property.

So finally we get to the pot.  There was a forty-acre field behind the house on Route 110 where my father was born and raised, and which, in fact, he also died in after many year on Jigger Hill where he had a large dairy farm.  One year when he was plowing that field in preparation for planting corn for silage for the cows he uncovered an iron pot right at the spot where the Havens house had been.  At some point a new house was built on the small plateau above the field which was subject to flooding in tempestuous springs.  Even so, it was "known" where the Robert Havens house was.  

Having told that rendition of our family history, it strikes me that it was not plowing the field which unearthed the pot (actually there were two pots our father found, this one and a black one without legs) but when he was digging in the field for a small gravel pit.  I will need to clarify with my sister.  Either story is okay with me.  This just goes to show that we need to write down family stories when there is still an older generation to clear up any misconceptions...!  (To do this, I suggest everyone starts a family tree on FamilySearch.org which it totally free and which has the option of sharing Memories which can be photos, documents, even audio recordings. I LOVE that site! Plus you can research your own family as you build your tree. And yes, I have added memories of a variety of types to our family tree.  You can put my father's name in, if you know it, and see some things.)

The story that has come to be known about that pot, at least which we choose to believe was the actual pot, was that when the Indians were crossing the First Branch, Mrs. Havens saw them crossing the field and put her two very young children under the pot, thereby saving them from the Indians who soon entered their home.

The pot was near the wood stove in our home growing up.  Somehow I managed to become the caretaker of that pot many years ago.  We had it beside our wood stove and put firewood in it during the winter.  It was a great place for wood chunks because often in the winter the wood came into the house covered with ice and snow.  To avoid the snow melting all over the pine plank floor we put the wood into the pot.

This is a closer-up picture that shows the heavy handle.  This would have been the laundry pot that hung over the fire filled with water to heat the water or perhaps even for soap-making/rendering fat to make soap.  It is VERY heavy and has three legs on the bottom.

When we moved to South Carolina about the only treasure from my side of the family that made the cut to come south was that pot.  It now sits in our garage where it is the repository of several garden tools, a ham radio antenna which is waiting for permission to be installed (HOA's have rules, don't you know...), and two folded-up chairs that we take when we go to meetings in the neighborhood where there is no seating.  I love this pot and will one day give it to our daughter.

The First Country Wife Cookbook Story

When our children began to get out of little childhood, we began giving them even more responsibility.  When J was 12 years old his father hurt is back on a wood project so J took over Dad's part of the cow chores, learning to milk with the milking machine. I did the morning milking and he did the evening milking.  I had always done the morning milking since I could go to work a little later than Dad.

When the children began to get into their teens, it was obvious that they were old enough to use the stove, the oven, and the pantry to support their eating habits.  SO I decided to write up a simple cookbook of the easiest foods we ate.  I formatted it and printed out a copy for the kitchen which became tomato sauce spattered almost  immediately and tattered and torn.  Because it was not fancy at all, and because it was on the computer, I was able to print out a new copy at will.

Later on as new recipes came to be popular, I added those recipes and eventually had quite a few recipes.

The first recipes in the cookbook was:

APPLE CRISP

In a large mixer bowl combine:

1 cup flour

1 cup oatmeal, uncooked

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup oleo or butter. (at some point we stopped using oleomargarine altogether and when we needed fat in a recipe, just used butter)

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Combine well until all crumbs are about the same size and uniform in color. In 9 x 13 pan place sliced apples-about 10-15 apples cored and peeled. The apples should come up almost to the top of the pan. Now put the apple slices in a very large bowl and sprinkle over the apples 2/3 cup white sugar and 1 Tablespoon cinnamon. Mix all together with your hands until all the apples are well coated with the cinnamon/ sugar mixture. Feel free to lick your fingers after putting the apples in the 9 by 13 pan.  

Once the apples are coated and in the pan,  sprinkle the "crisp" on top of the apples as uniformly as possible.  Bake in 350 degree F. oven for 35-45 minutes.

Roasted Carrots

Carrots have always been one of my favorite foods.  I think the real reason is that the first time I was really aware of carrots as a young child was when Uncle Lewie was in the service and needed to improve his night vision so he was instructed to eat lots of carrots.  Ever since then I have had a love affair with carrots.

Most recently I have loved roasted carrots.

Roasted Carrots

Wash and cut into sticks a couple of pounds of carrots.  Dry them well and place in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil...perhaps 2 to 3 Tablespoons but no more than 3 Tablespoons.  With your clean hands, lift and turn and mix well until every carrot stick is coated with the oil.  If there is oil in the bottom of the bowl you have used too much oil.  Use less next time.

Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of coarse Kosher salt and about the same amount of crushed black pepper.  Stir with a spoon this time unless you want to lick the salt and oil off your fingers!

Place in a large rimmed pan such as a half-sheet pan and spread out one layer thick.  It is somewhat important that each carrot touch the surface of the pan.  Tightly cover pan with aluminum foil. Let roast in a 400 degree F. oven for about 15 minutes.  Remove from oven and remove the foil from pan.  Turn carrots over and return pan to oven to cook an additional 10-15 minutes.  Watch them closely after the 10 minutes.  You want them to brown but not burn.

These are delicious right out of the oven.  They are also great at room temperature.

Uncle E's Cannon

Long ago when I was a teenager, my brother E was also a teenager.  He was also very very creative!  In shop class in our high school he made a cannon.  Don't ask me how he did it or why the shop teacher allowed such a project, but he did do it.

One glorious summer day soon after he had made the cannon, the rest of us kids were lying on our backs on the lawn under the big maple tree up near the large rhubarb patch watching the gorgeous puffy white clouds floating by in the bright blue sky trying to identify their shapes...a camel there, that one was definitely the neighbor's nose.   From our spot on the cushy grass we could look out over the valley past the end of our  big white farm house.

E decided this would be the day to use the cannon for the first time.  I was totally oblivious to what he was doing (oblivion being one of my less attractive character traits developed from an early age....).  By the time he was set up and ready to go,  I had become aware. 

There he was, small cannon set up on that lush green grass and pointed toward the valley, and BOOM!!  Off went whatever he had used to prime the cannon.  What a fabulous success it seemed.  For a moment.  Almost immediately we realized that he had hit the telephone pole just past the house!  Yikes!  Being kids, it didn't seem like much of a problem until we went into the house to find we had no telephone service...

Kids will do the darnedest things.  Sometimes they are successful, but with unpleasant results. 

To my knowledge, the cannon was never fired again.

Bedtime Story: Accident in the Jeep Station Wagon

When I was in the neighborhood of ten or eleven years old one day Great-Aunt Lottie and Great-Uncle Leonard came to visit.  I loved them dearly.  Aunt Lottie had the most wonderful tinkly laugh and glorious sparkling eyes.  Uncle Leonard was such a kind pleasant man.

It was a ravishingly lovely summer day so my brothers, sister, and I hopped into our Jeep station wagon with Mother, Aunt Lottie and Uncle Leonard.  There was not room for everyone inside so E, J, and I sat on the tailgate, with the lift gate in lifted position and off we left for a trip to Raspberry Hill, a little less than a mile from our home.

The road was narrow but pleasant with a wonderful canopy of hardwood trees overhead and a little brook running beside the road, though it was almost reduced to just a wet swath beside the road because it was summer.  As we were riding along, swinging our legs back and forth a few inches above the dirt road, all of a sudden Mother went over a bump.  With that bump, the accident happened!

The lift gate decided it had had enough in that up position and it smashed down on our heads.  Being the oldest, and tallest, but only barely, I felt it first but my brother and sister also were injured.  If you don't know head injuries, I can tell you that head wounds bleed a LOT! 

Mother stopped the Jeep to check on us.  For some reason she thought it would be a good idea for us to get off the tailgate and walk back home to the house, at this point, only about a quarter mile away.  Being obedient children, we headed up the pike for home.  There was nowhere that she could turn the Jeep around so she and Aunt Lottie, Uncle Leonard, L, and B, the baby, continued on to Raspberry Hill where she was able make the turn and head back home.

As the three of us kids walked toward home, we found that Daddy was in the barnyard,  scraping out the barn with the little Farmall Cub tractor.  I often wondered what his first thoughts were when he saw his three middle children walking towards the barnyard with blood streaming down our faces and onto our clothes.  I do know that he immediately got of the tractor and ran toward us. 

It turned out that when we were washed off and put into clean clothing that we really were fine.  My scalp lost a little bit of hair and there is a tiny bald spot there to this day.  My sister has a little bump to this day.  I do not remember what happened to E's head.

Moral of the story: be careful always.

Other morals:  you could choose many that would work!

Good Vegetarian Chili

Recently I received an email from America's Test Kitchen.  They had two vegetarian recipes that they insisted were really good.  Because we like chili in our house, I decided to try the recipe.

First thing this morning, before I was even dressed, I went to the cellar for some dry pinto beans to put soaking.  After picking them over and rinsing them well, I put them in a heavy 6-quart pot.  Maybe it is 8 quarts, good sized anyway.  From then on, the recipe changed due to what I had in the kitchen.  This post is what I actually did.

Put  one and one half pounds picked over, rinsed and drained pinto beans in a large pot.  Add 3 Tablespoons Kosher salt and 4 quarts water and bring to a boil.  When boiling, turn off heat, cover, and let sit for one hour.  After one hour of sitting, place pot in oven at 300 degrees F. and let cook for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven and  drain through a large colander.  Wash and dry pot.

In food processor finely chop onions, to make at least 3 cups chopped onions.  I only had small onions so I removed skins from about 12 onions then chopped them in processor on pulse for 30-45 seconds.  Add one-quarter cup vegetable oil to the large pot and bring to a shimmer over medium heat.  Add the onions and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions begin to brown.

In the meantime, in a small food processor or spice grinder place 1 cup of home-dried mushrooms (or 3-4 dried shiitake mushrooms if you have access to them) and 3-4 Tablespoons of italian seasoning (or just oregano if you want to be a little more "normal"), and process until very fine.  Add 3 Tablespoons ancho chili powder and 3 Tablespoons regular chili powder and pulse to combine again.  Add 1 Tablespoon cumin and pulseonce again.  Set aside.

When onions are lightly browned, add the seasoning mixture to the pot and stir for 1-2 minutes, until the seasonings smell nice, OR stop before that because you are nervous about burning them.  This is over medium heat...but still, there are always burning concerns...

In food processor pour in one 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes, 6-8 garlic cloves, 3 Tablespoons soy sauce (yes, soy sauce) and 2 Tablespoons pickled jalapenos.  Process for about 1 minute, until everything makes a lovely mush.

By this time the onions spice mixture is ready to be removed from the heat.  Add the tomato mixture and stir well.  Add in the well-drained cooked beans, and 7 cups water.  Stir very well until everything is combined.  Stirring pretty often, bring to a boil.  When boiling add 3/4 cups bulgar wheat and stir again.  Cover and put in oven at 300 degrees F. for two hours.

Remove from oven.  Remove lid and stir well.  Let sit 20-30 minutes.

Garnish with fun stuff like chopped avocados, sour cream, shredded cheese, lime wedges, diced fresh tomatoes, or whatever else appeals to you.   Or just dish it up and eat!  Plain is fine. 


Yummy!  Makes PLENTY so invite your family and friends to join you for a nice winter's supper.