It’s Fall Y’all – Lost Arts

I remember the first time my Yankee Dad heard me say, “y’all.” He replied with something like I didn’t raise you to say “y’all.” But I digress.

Its fall. Time for pumpkin spice lattes.

No, wait, it’s time for a lot more than fancy coffees!

It’s time for apple butter and pumpkin puree; at least, it is in this house.

This year I didn’t make it to get apples, but I did buy a few bags locally. Not the bushels that I would prefer, but enough to make at least one batch of apple butter and some caramel apples.

And two cinderella pumpkins are sitting on my dining room table, getting ready to be processed so I can make pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, and pumpkin pie, and then freeze some, so we have them for the puppies for treats this next year.

Are these lost skills?

Do people still make apple butter from scratch?

And do people buy pumpkins for something other than jack-o-lanterns?

Fall chores include putting the garden to bed for the winter. Or if you live here in the south, it means putting in those winter crops.

You get to can all those beautiful things that you harvested this fall. Homemade jams and jellies are some of my favorites. Tomatoes, green beans, and peppers must be put up in some way so you can enjoy them in the off-season.

It can be a lot of work, don’t get me wrong. But it is something that I take pleasure in.

Skills from past generations

As I have started to ensure we have enough to get by, I have thought more about my grandmother’s skills. My mother’s mother lived with us from before I could remember. She and my mom did a lot of canning, and our freezer was always full of good stuff. And even though my sister remembers my mom making hamburger helper (it was the 70s, after all), I remember Sunday dinner with homemade meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, and gingerbread with lemon sauce. Doesn’t that sound good?

I remember having a large garden that had rows and rows of strawberries. My Grandma would can lots of stuff that came out of that garden. The strawberries were made into jam or frozen to enjoy in the winter. I remember the strawberries so well because I had to pick them twice a day when they started to ripen.

Lost Art?

But I go back to is this a lost art? Do we teach our kids to garden and how to can and cook?

Now I have five kids. They all have their skills. There are a few that can cook. But none have taken up canning. I don’t think I did it until I was in my 30s. I have one daughter who likes to garden and doesn’t make the time, but she does have the skills.

So she is still washing her jeans and her t-shirts together, but she has basic gardening skills.

We laugh at that meme we all see. You know the one. Where the 20-something says farming needs to end because it is the worst environmental endangerment?

It makes you scratch your head and wonder.

Do these 20-somethings think that food just magically appears on grocery store shelves?

Maybe it just comes from the factory that makes it?

Who questions where those resources come from?

On days like that, I want to get back to basics and ensure that my kids and grandkids know where these resources come from.

The fairies only steal your keys and maybe your jeans. They do not just arrive at your kitchen table with a platter of homemade goodness.

We Need to get Back to Basics.

We have started this journey of what I am calling homesteading. Now we only live on an acre. Maybe someday it will be more.

We are trying to get back to self-sufficiency.

The grocery store is still my friend, but we all remember not having toilet paper.

I never want to scramble around for that again. Worrying about if we will have enough food to feed ourselves is not something I ever want to go through.

Those homesteaders of bygone days only had themselves to rely on. Think of Little House on the Prairie. Laura and Mary were my heroes growing up. Ma and Pa only had their wits to rely on and maybe family and friends.

I am not talking isolationist. Being able to rely only on yourselves and help your neighbors is not the same thing.

Let’s learn to garden and preserve. We can learn to shop the sales and put things away for future use.

I do not know all this stuff; I only have a small percentage. I am though willing to learn. And I am also willing to pass what knowledge I have and that I learn on to others.