Love Letters From the Grave(61)

When staying at their farm house, they were usually constantly busy with work, mostly outside with the garden and tending to the animals. Because they were acquiring more and more Amish attire, they began to routinely wear the very durable and serviceable clothing, shoes and boots, when working around the farm. Made of natural fibers that were grown organically on Amish or Mennonite farms, and creatively hand-woven on Amish-made looms, the clothing kept the wearer cooler in summer and warmer in winter than typical factory-manufactured clothing. The shoes and boots were also super comfortable, as well as durable, made of leathers from locally grown animals which was hand-tanned by Amish professionals, and custom-made by the hands of Amish experts in leather and artisans in shoe making.

While they were living in their lake home they ate out a great deal, but they rarely did when living in their farm home. Nearly all the food they ate while there was grown or raised on their farm, and nearly all their meals were prepared by Molly. Molly loved to cook and bake, to the enormous delight of Charlie, who absolutely loved to have the home flooded with the mouth-watering aromas of baked foods, especially biscuits - and she spent hours each day in creating delicious meals and snacks for her and Charlie, as well as their many guests and visitors.

It seemed that they almost always had at least one other person eating with them at every meal of the day. With neighborhood children, and grandchildren, around most of the time, sometimes quite a few of them running in and out of the house, Molly kept the kitchen and dining room tables loaded with breads, biscuits, pies, cakes, cookies, donuts, jams and jellies, a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and other snacks. She also made sure that the coffee pots were kept filled with fresh coffee, the teapot ready to brew tea, and the refrigerators filled with pitchers of milk, cider, and water, as well as with lunch meats, cheeses, and other delectable snacks, such as home-made candies. On most days, it seemed, there was a steady stream of children, and adults, grabbing items from the tables and refrigerators, and either eating them on the run, or sitting, singly or in small groups, at a table.

The house pantries were kept fully stocked with condiments, home-grown herbs, a variety of flour and other baking and cooking ingredients, a variety of canned fruits and vegetables (mostly contained in Mason jars), and baskets of a variety of fruits and vegetables. The cellar shelves were literally full of canned fruits; vegetables; fruit sauces, jams and jellies; slabs and rounds of cheeses, and many other delectable food items; the cellar floor was crammed with crocks, kegs, and large jars of ciders, juices, beers and milk, and baskets of fruit and vegetables; and hanging from cross-beams of the cellar ceiling, were cured hams and large tubes of thuringers, sausages and other processed meats.

From the time she was a girl, helping her mother in the kitchen, Molly became quite experienced in canning and other forms of food preservation. However, she did not even come close to having the experience, skills and creativity of June, their share-cropper.

To Molly, June seemed to be as good if not better than any of the Amish food preservers she’d met. She had, infrequently, done some canning with June, mostly vegetables from their garden such as tomatoes, green beans, shelly beans, corn, beets, and pickles.

However, once they completed renovating their lake home, she began to get more serious about it, and every year thereafter, she and June preserved hundreds and hundreds of jars of vegetables, fruits, tomato juice, apple butter, apple sauce, jams and jellies, mostly during three month periods from mid-August through mid-November. Although Molly became quite skilled at it, and had acquired all the necessary cookers, pots, pans, Mason jars, rubber gaskets, lids, jelly jars and sealing paraffin wax, she always canned with June - either in her kitchen or in June's. In fact, Frank built his wife an annex to their kitchen specifically for canning, which, when completed, they used almost exclusively for their joint canning projects.

As they continued to increase the fertility of the garden and orchard, they became increasingly productive - especially when the fruit trees grew to maturity. Eventually it reached the point where they simply could not eat or can all of it, so they then had the great pleasure of giving large proportions of the fruits and vegetables, and even canned goods, to their many relatives, friends and neighbors. Charlie and Molly had always been generous with the fruits of their farm, but now they had to actively encourage people to accept a substantial part of their harvests, to keep the excesses from rotting in the field. Fortunately, there was enough hauled away by grateful recipients that nothing produced on the farm ever went to waste.

Charlie discussed all of this with his Amish friends, and discovered that they regularly used services provided by the USDA and county agricultural agents, even though the agencies viewed Amish agricultural practices as nineteenth century and archaic. The Amish weren’t bothered about the views of outside communities, preferring to build from within with a constant drive among farmers, blacksmiths and craftsmen to improve their way of life by incorporating new ideas. Charlie and Molly adored that way of life, and became quite expert in Amish ways, Charlie working with the carpenters and Molly noodle-making and baking in the kitchens at the barn raisings they attended.

Then at their thirtieth wedding anniversary, over at the lake, Charlie surprised Molly with a horse, a beautiful black mare (which Molly named Black Beauty) to pull along the buggy which they borrowed from their old friend Aaron from time to time. They dearly loved to take buggy rides behind the fast-paced trotting of Black Beauty, through the peaceful Amish rural landscape, and to visit the many quaint small towns scattered about the beautiful countryside…