Maxine Lee is grandmother of our good friend carterzest. Today’s guest post from Maxine is the last in this series of seven drawn from the narrative of her family’s history from her 2005 publication – Some Assembly Required. The publishing of her stories was a result of her dream “to leave a printed account to my family, of my beginning, my birth place and childhood, and a few of the lessons life has taught to me.” Thank you, Maxine, for sharing with us what you gathered for them.
Bing Crosby, with Pennies from Heaven, provides a nice book end for this enjoyable series as well as a framing for Maxine’s Scripture thought for today, which carries the same title. Thank you, Maxine, for all of the word pictures of all the pennies from heaven that fill our lives – blessings past, present, and future. ~Sharon
General Foods
Hog Butcherin’, Hayin’ and Puttin’-By
In the early summer, we had ice cream. Dad and the boys went to the lake and cut out huge blocks of ice in winter, buried it in sawdust piles which kept enough ice to make ice cream. Churned by hand, packed in ice and salt and covered with gunny sacks to harden, the ice cream was soon ready to be eaten.
Since we always had milk, mom made biscuits and white gravy. That is still one of my favorite things – with sausage or salted beef. 
We often had fried potatoes. They were crisp, salted and peppered and cooked in an old black cast-iron skillet – the best way to do fried potatoes. Adding onions gave the potatoes still another flavor.
I know we had meat all winter and chicken in summer, but it didn’t make that big an impression on me. I do recall wanting to chew on the bony pieces of chicken, because the meat was always juicier on the wings and back. We were given only one piece of chicken and it was hard to choose: quality or quantity.
In summer, there were green onions and radishes, watermelon and cantaloupe. I didn’t learn to like the melons until I was older. I have already mentioned how important fish was to us which I still appreciate. Dessert was a once-in-a-while event.
When we lived in Oregon, meat became a once-a-week treat. In fact, it seems we never had anything in the house to eat. My teen years were the hardest, food-wise and otherwise; but that’s another story. When we lived on the Flynn place, and while Mom was in town one day, my brother got the bag of raisins down from the top of the cupboard, ate a lot, and talked me into helping myself to the raisins, that way Mom wouldn’t get quite so mad at him. We must have been hungry.
Harvest time was a time of high excitement.
It was hard work, because for the grain to be threshed it first had to be cut, tied and put into shocks. I hated that part. It was always hot and the barley had beards that scratched. But the work had to be done. It meant leaning the bales together at the top to protect them in case it rained. There were six or eight bales in a shock. The field looked beautiful when it 
was finished – the shocks like Indians standing in rows to do battle. The colors ranged from golden to tan, just like Indians.
As children, harvest was our favorite time. The neighbors shared in harvesting and came to our place with their threshing machines. All the men arrived with the horses, and the lady of the house had to furnish the food. People brought pies and cakes, and we had fried chicken with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, sweet, buttered corn and lemonade. Harvest was like a big party for us.
Sandwiches were made from store-bought bread. They were prepared in the afternoon, to serve as a fast supper while the men were in the fields until their work was done. After helping with our harvest, they moved on to the next farm.
Sometimes hog and beef 
butchering work was also shared with neighbors. Butchering was done in the fall when the cold weather would keep the meat from spoiling. Dad started a fire outside, and secured a brace high between two trees to hang the animal for dressing out. On the fire went a huge tub of water. When the water was boiling, a pig was shot, or its throat was cut, and was let to bleed until it dropped. (Saves on shells, gross.) The pig was gutted, hung from the tree for easy reaching and then put into the boiling water. After a certain time, the carcass was put on boards that leaned against the barn and was scraped with knives to remove all the bristles. Then it was ready to be cut up. The head was removed, the ham pieces were put into a barrel and packed with a sugar cure mixture. The fat was removed and Mom placed it into pans in the oven and on the stove to render out the lard, which was saved for cooking, baking donuts and used in place of butter, when we had no butter.
When a cow was butchered, we had another treat coming. Mom would make headcheese. Dad loved pickled headcheese, and if Dad liked it we thought we did. Mom carefully scrubbed the teeth of the skinned head and cooked in a large pot until the meat almost fell off the bones. Then she removed it from the broth, saving some broth for the finished product. She chopped the meat into little pieces, added herbs and spices and some of the broth, and packed it into loaf pans. When it was set from the gelatin in the meat and broth, it was sliced. She put some slices in pickling brine with more spices. Headcheese made great sandwiches. Nothing was wasted.
Usually we consumed one young steer and a hog during the long winter months. Sometimes, we split the meat with a neighbor. I remember the time when a whole barrel of hams soured and couldn’t be eaten.
In October, we usually started thinking of winter as the weather slowly began to turn cold. Dad had dug a cellar on the side of the hill for storing those vegetables which would hold through the winter – onions, squash, carrots, turnips and potatoes. It was hard work. But Mom dressed us in warm woolen pants and the gathering and stacking became a game. She put some vegetables into jars, but most were dried or kept in the root cellar.
In the spring, Dad built a hot frame out of old windows in which Mom started all the plants that would make our vegetable garden for the next summer. We also ate well on the farm. If the meat ran out, there was the wild meat. Once we ate a roasted raccoon. I can still see that huge pan all golden, and a strong smell of garlic. I don’t remember enjoying that meal, except for the dressing; that was good. We often had pheasant for dinner and there was always fish. Life on the farm was good, but it was hard work.
Haying with horses took longer than today. First came the cutting, then raking, and stacking haycocks to protect from bad weather. They were hauled into barns, or 
sometimes just stacked in the field when the small barn was full. We hauled a load of hay each day as it was needed. We kids learned how to help pack the hay load down by running around on its top as Dad loaded with a pitchfork.
I have many good memories of the good things on the farm. Good food, fun with simple games, not much worry about anything. Even school was good.
At the little house on the peat swamp, there was a huge tank with a pump that provided us with good water from about a hundred yards below the house. Each morning in the summer, we older ones, age six and seven, took turns pumping water for the cattle. The cows drank, and drank, and drank. In the winter, Dad took an ax and cut through the ice to let the cows drink. I did not care for that job. It was cold and sloppy and the cows were a little scary when they started pushing and shoving to get to the water. Those cows were so big.
(Maxine’s faith is part of her story, and included in the book are Scripture lessons which are illustrated with stories from her life)
Pennies from Heaven
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little. (Isaiah 28:10)
Lying on the sidewalk, all by itself, was a penny that someone had dropped or thrown. There have been stories lately about believing that where you see a penny, an angel is near. That sounds comforting and maybe it’s true. I don’t know. I do know there are angels all around us, because the Bible says so.
These days, people don’t see much value in a penny and, in irritation, will throw them down. But I pick them up because I was born in a time when a penny bought something. You didn’t throw pennies away because they added up. Penny candy was available, for three cents you could mail a letter, and a loaf of bread cost about a dime. It was before credit cards became a tool and people lived on their wages or did without.
Saving things becomes an addiction. Watch the way people in their seventies and sixties budget and shop carefully. They make their pennies count and they pay as they go. I collect those pesky pennies and roll them in paper sleeves. There are fifty pennies in a sleeve and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it isn’t long until you have a dollar. Ten sleeves make five dollars and now, I can buy something!
Look at how you grow in Christ. You cannot learn it all at once, but everyday there is a new lesson. When I stack those pennies into the paper sleeves, it reminds me that I have learned “line upon line, precept upon precept.” Like children learning to walk, we must learn a step at a time, but God is faithful to bring such lessons our way. Every lesson is of more value than a penny, or even five dollars.
God’s precepts are “more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward.” (Psalm 19:10, 11)
Learning those precepts line upon line, here a little, there a little, adds up. Collect them. They must not be wasted for they are truly Pennies from Heaven.
Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana. These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home” and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.
Maybe you’ve seen some of the same mailboxes along your roads, or glimpsed some of the same old barns
through your storms.
In one way or another, anything you read in this weekly feature is a word picture of some mailbox or some old barn, tangible or intangible, seen by the author somewhere along the roads of their memory. Our stories of other times and places become word pictures of our mailboxes, our old barns.
This current series from Maxine Lee has elements of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon in it. Others have shared MBOBs from Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma and MBOBs from anywhere show up in the threads. Thank you to all who share in the posts and in the threads, and thanks again to Maxine today.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/18/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-may-18/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/25/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-may-25/
https://theconservativetreehouse.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee-3/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/06/08/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee-4/