The Symphony Of The Seasons (page 5)
AUTUMN
The hot, sleepy, sweaty days of Summer have come and gone. Barefoot boys and girls have donned their stockings and shoes and are back at the little white school, probably in different "classes" and a new teacher, all curious to know what the new teacher will be like.
September brings chilly nights and uncertain weather. The trees are putting off their greenery and are donning robes of red, gold, and brown. The smell of ripeness is in the air. Summer has matured into Autumn, bringing with it a whole host of different problems and jobs to be done.
Autumn on the farm is the time to harvest the fruits of the summer. Apples, on those old apple trees, are waiting to be picked and stored in the cold cellar, where they will provide fresh fruit for our eating all winter long. We have a selection from which to choose. There were Northern Spys, Baldwin, Russet, Talman Sweet, Greening, all to be hand picked from ladder with any handy bucket. These would be used in many ways. At one time, I remember Mama, Grandma and Auntie would spend hours paring, coring and slicing for the process of drying. Dried apples were stored in clean cloth bags, upstairs in one of the clothes closets where it was usually quite cool and dry, and would eventually be used for apple sauce and apple pies. Then there was Apple Butter, made by cooking applesauce in apple cider and adding a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg.
Potatoes and turnips were ready for digging now, to be stored in the cold cellar for safe keeping. It usually happened that Nature gave us a hard time in the form of cold, rainy, and sometimes snowy weather. Imagine grubbing in the cold wet earth to pick up potatoes and other root crops by hand. (These jobs are done by machine nowadays) We would finish the day with cold, numb, wet hands, our clothes also quite damp, our feet heavy with mud and our spirits dragging.
Autumn, on our farm, was the time of year when a fatted pig, one that had escaped the market, would be butchered. I well remember the fresh Sausage Meat and Head Cheese Ma made and packed in crocks and sealed with lard, for use in the winter months. Hams and Bacon were smoke-cured and hung in the cool of the Woodshed. Fresh Pork chops, cutlets and roasts were at once available for our meals.
Autumn was doughnut time at our place. Now, we had a surplus of cooking fat, in the form of lard, rendered from the fatpork. For a special treat, Ma would make up a batch of old-fashioned doughnuts, holes and all, using the bubbling-hot lard for the required deep fat cooking. There were no better doughnuts than those Mama-made doughnuts of long ago.
Autumn was also corn harvesting time. With our neighbour-shared Cornbinder pulled by our trusty work-team, Maude and Nancy, and Pa in the driver's seat, row after row of frost-ripened corn stocks were cut and bound into sheaves. In due time the sheaves were stooked with the help of a "corn horse" and a binding rope to pull the sheaves together and then bound with bindertwine. We usually husked the corn before stooking. This was a family affair, with everyone taking part. The husks were removed with the use of a "husking peg". The husked corn was hauled to the corn-crib at the barn, where it would be stored and allowed to dry out for feed and seed purposes.
There was never any silo on our farm. The corn stocks were, nevertheless, used for feed with the use of our "cuttingbox" which chopped them into bite-sized pieces and stored them in a special room for future use in the cattle's menu.
Now with all of the harvesting-in including the pumpkins and winter squash, one important job remained. Saws and axes must be made ready for the Winter wood-cutting, for winter fuel -- a perpetual job at our place.
Yes, Autumn was a season apart but necessary. Winters there would be unbearable without the autumn for preparation.
As the days grow shorter and winter more certain, we must turn our attention to the livestock. The free-range poultry had to be gathered into the winterized hen house. The pigs who had escaped the market and the slaughter barrel (mostly sows), were confined to their pens. The cattle were all to be stabled and chained in their stalls with clean straw bedding from the new strawstack. Yes, there was always work to be done down at our farm.