William Henry Flowers and Edna Merritt Flowers (Madison County, FL C. 1940)
One of my earliest memories is of walking with my father Henry Collis Flowers through his strawberry patch in Ashburn, Georgia. Never again will strawberries taste as sweet as those warm-in-the-sun berries as we picked them and popped them the very next second into our mouths.
My father always grew vegetable gardens. My childhood snacking was not about scrounging in a pantry for cookies or candy. If I got hungry while playing I knew I could pick a perfectly ripe tomato and eat it right then and there without bothering to wash either the tomato or the hand that plucked it. Later, by the time I was seven or eight I had developed the habit of eating a raw sweet onion out of hand as an apple is eaten. (Fortunately, I gave up this habit before being old enough to date, or I might still be single.)
I think the garden my father grew might now be called a mini-farm. It consisted of several acres and required hiring a man with a mule to plow it for us each spring. We ate what grew there: from spring onions to late fall collards, sweetened by the first frost.
Along with the garden produce for harvesting, there were grapevines requiring attention as well. My mother Winnie Rouse Flowers put up dozens of jars of bright purple concord grape jelly each year. Somehow it all turned out just right; as soon as we opened the last jar of jelly to spread on hot biscuits, the grapes would suddenly be ready to harvest again.
My father also bought one hog to raise and butcher each year, and my grandmother kept chickens that provided both eggs and meat for the family table. I didn’t think much about all this activity in those days. It was just the way people did things in the 1940s, but now I know how rare it was to be brought up in nearly rural circumstances. There, at the beginning of my life, I had the little homestead adventure I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to copy on a micro-scale.
Daddy’s favorite crop was sweet potatoes. To store them, he buried the wooden sides of an old farm truck halfway into the ground. Then each year as he harvested his sweet potatoes, he put them in the part that was underground and covered them with hay or straw on top. It was the south Georgia version of a root cellar. We ate the sweet potatoes both baked and fried.
To make your own fried sweet potatoes, cut a medium sweet-sized potato into wide slices (not strips like French fries) about a quarter inch thick. Fry in hot oil. Drain on paper towels and salt each batch as it comes out of the hot oil.
Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used without prior written permission and designated attribution.
My father always grew vegetable gardens. My childhood snacking was not about scrounging in a pantry for cookies or candy. If I got hungry while playing I knew I could pick a perfectly ripe tomato and eat it right then and there without bothering to wash either the tomato or the hand that plucked it. Later, by the time I was seven or eight I had developed the habit of eating a raw sweet onion out of hand as an apple is eaten. (Fortunately, I gave up this habit before being old enough to date, or I might still be single.)
I think the garden my father grew might now be called a mini-farm. It consisted of several acres and required hiring a man with a mule to plow it for us each spring. We ate what grew there: from spring onions to late fall collards, sweetened by the first frost.
Along with the garden produce for harvesting, there were grapevines requiring attention as well. My mother Winnie Rouse Flowers put up dozens of jars of bright purple concord grape jelly each year. Somehow it all turned out just right; as soon as we opened the last jar of jelly to spread on hot biscuits, the grapes would suddenly be ready to harvest again.
My father also bought one hog to raise and butcher each year, and my grandmother kept chickens that provided both eggs and meat for the family table. I didn’t think much about all this activity in those days. It was just the way people did things in the 1940s, but now I know how rare it was to be brought up in nearly rural circumstances. There, at the beginning of my life, I had the little homestead adventure I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to copy on a micro-scale.
Daddy’s favorite crop was sweet potatoes. To store them, he buried the wooden sides of an old farm truck halfway into the ground. Then each year as he harvested his sweet potatoes, he put them in the part that was underground and covered them with hay or straw on top. It was the south Georgia version of a root cellar. We ate the sweet potatoes both baked and fried.
To make your own fried sweet potatoes, cut a medium sweet-sized potato into wide slices (not strips like French fries) about a quarter inch thick. Fry in hot oil. Drain on paper towels and salt each batch as it comes out of the hot oil.
Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used without prior written permission and designated attribution.
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