Grandma’s Letter to You

 

On December 14, 1924, I was born on a farm in Brecknock Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Our home was along the Black creek, near Good’s Mill. I had a very kind mother and a hard working father. I had four brothers (Aaron, Paul, Roy and Ivan Witmer) and three sisters (Anna Long) and Edna Carpenter. My older sister Elsie died of pneumonia when she was 15 months old.

Since we lived on a farm, we raised lots of our own food. We had a really nice garden in which we grew our vegetables and a variety of other things. Things like herbs, peanuts, popcorn and ground cherries. To prepare our garden for planting, we spaded it all by hand. Then we raked it till no lumps were there. Spring and summer were busy times of the year for us.

Summer was a busy time for us ladies in the kitchen. We “moved in” to the summerhouse in the summer. We still slept in the main house, but most of our daytime activities were done in the summerhouse. It was one room that had a large fireplace, range stove and a table to work and eat at. You could walk into the fireplace. It had a rod to hang kettles on for cooking. We also kept the range stove in the fireplace and were able to close the door and keep some of the heat out of the summerhouse.

Our main house stayed cool because we pulled the dark green shades and kept the doors closed. My mother often laid down there to rest in the afternoons. She was not well. She had a liver problem. We didn’t know it then, but now that I am older, I think she was getting migraines. She would get spells when she could not see and she had to go lay down. She would ask us to make her some bitter tea and it always helped her feel better.

We did all our canning on the range stove. (A range stove has a place to build fire underneath and it had a gauge on it so we could tell how hot it was. We added more wood if it was not hot enough. If it was too hot, we pushed the kettle to the back of the stove since the fire was in the front). We canned our beans, peas, corn and pickles. In the winter we canned our meat because we did not have a freezer. We did with out electric. Drying lots of other food, like beans, was another way we preserved our food.

We always baked on Thursdays. We used the fruit pies first because they would spoil; the shoofly pies were last. We made a lot of sugar and lep cookies and put them in a tight can in the cellar. We raised pumpkins and made pies with that as well as raspberries, strawberries, cherries. There were currant bushes (small berries used for pies and jelly) along the fence at the garden. We also picked black cherries off of our big black cherry tree for pies.

We made lots of meadow tea. It was so refreshing! We also cooled off by going swimming in the summer. My father said, if we got the hay in the barn we could go swimming so we hurried to get it in and went swimming till supper. s

Next to the summerhouse was the spring house. The spring house was a stone building with a spring of water running through it. We put our food in the spring water to keep cold. A pipe went through the stone wall and came out the other side so the water could run in to a trough for the horses and cows.

In the fall, we put red beets and turnips in the ground cellar, covering them with dirt. (A ground cellar is a cellar that has a dirt floor. It was cold and damp in there.) We also put our potatoes in the cellar in a bin. My father raised peanuts that we dug and hung up to dry. In the winter we roasted them in the oven for a healthy treat. We also planted popcorn to pop in the winter months. The sweet potatoes were put in a barrel, with chaff from the wheat, to keep them dry. We kept them in an upstairs bedroom to keep them dry. Our cabbage was made into sauerkraut by shredding it and salting it and putting into a ten-gallon crock. It was ready to eat by New Years day (but not before; it had to ferment). Pork and sauerkraut has been a family tradition for New Year’s Day.

We also planted soybeans. In the fall we cut them off with a shears and held them by the roots and shook them in a barrel to make the beans fall off. Then we put the beans in a white cloth bag and hung them in the attic.

In the winter, we butchered pigs and beef and canned all our meat. We cured ham and bacon by hanging them in the attic. We made scrapple, sausage and pan pudding (Pan pudding is the beginnings of scrapple. We took the meat off the bones, ground it and put in container. It was greasy. We ate it like that as a snack. To make scrapple, you add cornmeal and seasonings.)

We had chickens, so we had our own eggs. We made our own noodles and stored them in a lard can (like those old chip cans). We always had a few cows and made our own cheese and butter.

Dad took wheat to Good’s mill and brought back a barrel of flour. We also roasted field corn to make corn meal. We made corn meal mush and scrapple out of it.

We made apple butter in a large copper kettle; we put it in gallon crocks and tied wax paper around the top. The neighbors got together and snitzed (cut up) the apples the night before. They would help us and later we would go to their place and help them. We sang and Ivan played the mouth organ. It was a reason to get together and fellowship.

When it was full moon in the fall, we would have corn-husking parties for the neighborhood young people. It was fun. As a treat, we had apple cider and cookies. Someone played the mouth organ and we sang.

All our clothes were made at home out of feedbags. The bags had nice prints on them. We also had some plain white bags that we used to make pillowcases and sheets. Any scraps were saved for quilts, which we pieced together and quilted in the wintertime. There was nothing like electric, phone, or airplanes.

We worked hard, but there was also a fun side to our childhood. We went to Fivepointville School and when the snow was too deep to walk, we went in the horse and sleigh. We ice-skated on the creek.

When I was 16 years old, I met Grandpa and we dated until we were almost 18. Grandpa had to go for a test for the army-the war started in 1941. Pearl Harbor was bombed. The man at the service center said if he got married and worked on a farm he would not have to go to war. He came back home and asked me to get married.

We got married August 1, 1942. We received gas stamps and could only get a few gallons per month. Butter and sugar were rationed also. We moved to Morgantown on a farm receiving $65/month. I made lots of shoofly pie and put them on the windowsill to cool. Grandpa would come by on the tractor and take the whole pie!

A year and 1/2 later, on December 31, 1943, a precious son was born; Glen Harold Weaver. We bought a soft blue bunting suit for him. We lived there (Morgantown) 3 years, then we moved to Brecknock Township on my dad’s farm. We had our first daughter, Lavina Fern on March 30, 1946. At the end of the lane, my dad sold us a lot to build a house. We live there 57 years. The other children were born there. Velma Jean, March 1, 1950. Warren Ray, April 8, 1954. Jay Lawrence, September 17, 1957 and Tommy Dean, November 15, 1969. Now I am 80 years old and my children are gone from home and have homes of their own. I have 19 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren. I still live in the same house that we built 57 years ago on Long Lane, neighbors to the farm where I was born.