Every house needs a grandmother in it said the girl once known to the world initially as Flora Fairfield by her pen, but whose true identity was later revealed as Louisa May Alcott. I can envision what it must have been like growing up at Orchard House in a Concord, MA once upon a time!
Can you picture Louisa innocently walking through her family’s apple orchard during autumn of 1868, completely unaware that her “Little Women” would stand the test of time? I would have loved to just run up and spoil her solitude by squealing with excitement about how we’d still be talking about everything she was currently writing.
People still love to revisit the notion of the infamous, albeit only semi-fictional, March girls in their earthy country home surrounded by Marmee in her rustic kitchen. I think I get a small glimpse of it every November when I take a trip home to my rural roots where I traditionally gather a little gift left behind from my late father…kumquats. We try not to pick the citrus gems from the trees in bulk until a hard freeze is coming. Until then, I just pop them in my mouth one at a time as needed or until my eyes water, first from being sour, and second because they remind me of my Dad. The kumquats bring back so many memories of such a home as described by Alcott, lending gratitude to a lady of the house who knew how to make blackberry pies, lemon cakes, pecan pies, and how to preserve those precious fruits of the land for year round enjoyment.
Some of my dear friends feel the same way I do about their grapefruits as they do about my kumquats. They have their own canning-savvy grandmother awaiting in the kitchen. This year before the recent deep freeze, they picked 1,500 pounds of grapefruit in just a few days. I was blessed enough to take 300 pounds off their hands. Could I live up to the women of my youth by canning these in a water bath? Grannies of yesteryear naturally preserved food as a routine way of life. While this has become a lost art, Pinterest and Preppers have popularized it again similar to the way I remember canning and pickling foods being the norm when I was a young girl. The bountiful time capsules graced our table at almost every meal. We didn’t dabble much in fermenting or drying foods, but making jellies and jams was commonplace, as well as making biscuits from scratch that didn’t shy away from lard or butter.
Our grandmothers survived times and places we cannot imagine through our lens of modern conveniences. Perhaps we will know such a world again in the coming years if doomsday arrives, causing people to depend on sources other than the world’s infrastructure as we now know it. It’s a scary thought to fathom: living without connectivity, electricity, or adequate food or water supplies, but in the current turbulent world, it seems that the most abnormal phenomenon should never be ruled out.
When I picked up my grapefruit haul, there I found her— a mom and grandmother in her robe working heartily in her kitchen. While canning grapefruit in a water bath, she told me stories about her experiences and it reminded me of my own Grandmothers, my Mom, and Aunts who respectively possessed a mastery of survival skills that masquerade as a mere hobby. As they were busy canning, sewing, harvesting vegetables and meat from the land, or running off varmints by whatever means necessary, I studied them all while I played the piano in the background or cross-stitched pretty wall hangings.
How do we get back to a place like that with all its resourcefulness for basic survival? I thought maybe I should take a stab at being one of them for a day with my 300 pounds of grapefruit. I had already canned my father’s kumquats and ordered even more trees since they offer a lingering remembrance of our years together.
What really struck me was the way my friends’ Grapefruit Granny escorted me to her secret place where she showed me her stash, tucked deep inside a closet. I once knew a closet just like that and in an instant I could almost taste sweet pickles with a hint of cloves that we served on a china saucer next to our gumbo. Those were the days when we talked about life, as we sat around a table together.
Though nobody really agrees on how gumbo is to be prepared or served even, we always chose the side saucer filled with our pickles, a sweet potato, and saltines. We splashed pepper vinegar and filé as a garnish—green onions if we felt like it. Washed it down with a Coke or just some ice water. That was home. All soda is Coke in the South, but we drank the real thing, sometimes in glass bottles and often with peanuts in it.
It’s funny how a little trip to the pasture can unlock the best memories. I hope I never forget each one of them and all of the people who made life sweeter on the rural homestead. Getting back to civilization, I’m pretty sure that kumquats wouldn’t actually save the planet if we have a global disaster, but I would hope I would have a secret closet full to remember the more precious times. I would think it would have made my Dad proud knowing that between his kumquats and my stash of grapefruit preserves, I’d have one major food group covered for at least a whole week.
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