Fall in my part of Appalachia brings memories of college football games and hikes in the mountains. In my grandparent’s time, it was a time of harvest. It was apple drying time for my grandmother and the women who came before her. Walnut and hickory nuts were falling for the picking, and cane was waiting for sorghum making. All those ingredients to make the sweet treats her family loved had to be harvested.
I have a few early memories of my grandmother, Mamaw to her 13 grandchildren. Most center around her farmhouse kitchen. She was a small, dark-skinned woman of Native American ancestry who always wore dresses covered by an apron and stockings held up by elastic and rolled down to just below her knee. When she worked outside, she wore a bonnet. She always had a lip full of snuff. Her long hair was in a roll at the back of her head, secured by hairpins. She smelled of the snuff and her kitchen.
Mamaw had a farmhouse kitchen. There were a few cabinets my grandfather had built. One contained a large, deep, enameled white sink with fat rolled edges. There were windows above it that let in sunshine and air. They overlooked the smokehouse where at one time, her meat was smoked, cured, and stored. Her kitchen contained a Hoosier-style storage cabinet that held flour in a large bin. It had a built-in sifter and some storage for cooking supplies. It had an enameled pull-out shelf that allowed her to roll out the flour for biscuits and pies. An electric stove stood where a wood cook stove once did, and an electric refrigerator replaced her old oak ice box.
Both sides of the kitchen had doors to enclosed porches where food and supplies were stored. Air and ventilation were provided thru the porch doors. The air that came through them was some relief on hot summer days. The kitchen had a large dining area with a farmhouse-type table big enough to seat Mamaw’s seven-member family and guests or farm workers. To me, the kitchen, dining room, and table seemed gigantic. The room where food was prepared and enjoyed was the largest in the house.
By the 1950s, my grandparents were buying their groceries from the store. One thing you couldn’t buy there that made the cake so good was dried apples. They still came from Mamaw’s apple trees. When the apples were ripe, Mamaw sat on the front porch peeling and slicing the apples using a white enameled dishpan for the slices and a bucket for the peelings. The apples were small. It took quite a while to have a “mess” for drying.
My grandfather had a large board he set outside in the brightest sunlight atop a couple of old cane bottom chairs. Papaw and Mamaw placed a clean cloth over the board and scattered the apples in a single layer on top of the covered board. Another piece of thin fabric went over the apples to keep most of the flies and other bugs away. Over several days, the apples were occasionally turned as they baked in the sun. The apples were brought in at night. When the apples were dried enough, they were stored in cloth bags and kept to use as part of the filling for the Apple Stack Cake and pies.
According to my Dad, sorghum making was a big day-long family affair. The sugar cane was stripped of its leaves and other debris and crushed between rollers pulled by the family horses or mules. A green liquid came from a process that boiled over an open fire in big iron pots. It took hours for the liquid to turn into sorghum molasses that, when cooled, were stored in crocks or jars. It was used to sweeten everything.
I am sure my grandmother did other things besides cook, sew and work in the garden. I have read letters she wrote as a young woman, and she was literate and intelligent. She was an avid reader. The most amazing thing to me about her is what she saw and lived in her 96 years. As Mamaw aged, the world had changed. The Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to the rural south; women got the right to vote, cars, war, and so many other things brought cultural and other changes to her once self-sufficient life.
