Blackcap sauce over cooked rice was an original family recipe and “comfort food” on a Houston County farm on South Ridge in the 1940s. Most food, including berries, came from the family garden, but blackcaps (small black raspberries resembling caps) were a rare wild treat.
Annually, around the Fourth of July, the Beckman family would unpack long-sleeved shirts, because there were thorns involved, and walk into the woods to pick blackcaps. The adults tied gallon syrup pails around their waist for picking and periodically dumping into four-to-five-times-larger milk pails. Meanwhile, young David carried a half-gallon pail. But berries would rarely cover the bottom of that smaller pail because he would pick only a few berries before finding a place to sit and consume all of his personal pickings. However, despite little help from David, the picking crew would often return home with several milk pails of blackcaps.
The family blackcap harvest did not depend on David’s contributions, but he was successful when he was the lone picker. Other family members were no longer interested in the grapevines and bushes with currants and gooseberries, originally planted by his grandparents. While picking, David did eat some grapes, but freshly-picked currants and gooseberries were not that tasty and were better in jelly. “Most years, I managed to pick enough grapes and currants for Mother to make some jelly for me,” recalled David. “No one else ate any of it.”
Mother would can some fruit jam, but fruit sauces were highly-enjoyed homemade desserts. Raspberry sauce was David’s favorite. Strawberries and raspberries came from the family garden as well as berries they harvested from a cousin’s large berry patch near La Crescent. But once each summer, Mother would purchase a crate of peaches and pears from a grocery store in La Crosse. Again, some jam was canned, but much of the fruit was made into summer sauces. “So much sugar was needed for canning that we bought it in 50-pound sacks,” recalled David.
The family garden was “Mother and Dad’s pride and joy.” After farm chores were completed, there was garden work. “Weeds became fearful of making an appearance,” quipped David. During dry weather, Dad would lug five-gallon pails of water from the cistern and water the garden with a tin sprinkling can. The first row next to the road was floral with old standbys – zinnias, marigolds and/or gladiolas.
There were no unusual vegetables but plenty of beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. Peas were the first to be harvested with young David on hand for shucking. He was greatly frustrated by not being allowed to eat any. Some years, Mother would go to Caledonia to buy additional peas from the Sno Pac Company’s pea viners.
There were more green beans and yellow wax beans than any other vegetable. Mother took extra time to slice the green beans just the way Dad liked them. Sometimes referred to as “Julienne” or “French-cut” green beans, she called this thin-slicing preparation “schnibbling,” a German-language term commonly heard among German immigrants.
It took David a long time to learn to enjoy tomatoes, served sliced at most meals. David and his dad ate them with sugar; Mother preferred salt and pepper. She canned stewed tomatoes, which were served in a sauce bowl with winter meals. “I did learn to like stewed tomatoes,” recalled David.
Oddly enough, David does not recall growing sweet corn, but he does remember corn on the cob in the summer and plenty of canned corn in the winter. David had his own peculiar corn concoction – not with sweet corn, but with field corn. “What I do remember is looking for field corn ears after the kernels had just formed and were still very creamy, well before they started to dent. I would boil the ears in water for a long time to which I had added lots of sugar. No one else would have anything to do with my field corn delicacy.”
The last vegetables to be canned were the carrots, which like other root vegetables, could be left in the ground until the first frost. There were beets, turnips and rutabagas in the garden, but David does not remember consuming them canned.
The first planting in the spring was a halfacre or more of potatoes, a staple crop. Both the planting and harvesting was a family project. The prevailing tradition was planting around Good Friday. Furrows were made with a potato hiller with the flanges or wings set back and pulled by a single horse. A piece of potato, containing at least one eye, was dropped into the furrow about 10 inches apart and then “gently” stepped into the soil. With the flanges widely spread, a second pass covered the potatoes. When the plants were about a foot high, yet another pass would push about six inches of dirt around each plant, creating a hill where the potatoes would form.
Harvesting was accomplished with a potato digger. The potatoes and dirt were conveyed up to a rotating drum tumbler, which knocked off the dirt. The potatoes fell onto the ground where they were picked up and placed into gunny sacks, “I, being closest to the ground, had to help pick up the potatoes,” recalled David. The potatoes were piled into a corner of the cellar, a perfect place for storage for up to a year or more.
Every meal featured pickles: sweet pickles, dill pickles, icicle pickles or David’s favorite, pickled apples. In late August to early September, there would be an after-chores, five-mile trip to an orchard for a bushel of crab apples. About the size of a golf ball, a crab apple is not good eating off the tree and too small to be peeled and used in baking. However, they were juicy and delicious after David‘s mother pickled them in a brine of brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and apple cider vinegar. Stems provided handles while eating.
Pickled cucumbers were very early European imports, enduring voyages with Columbus, who valued their prevention of scurvy.
Source: “Gardening,” Aprons and Bib Overalls, by David H. Beckman, 2024
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