In the first installment of this series, my mother, nicknamed "Audey," shared her memories of her family's Texas kitchen garden. In this post, we pick up with her account of the larger garden, which was used primarily, through canning, to get the family through the leaner months.
At the little garden, you opened the gate and went into the big garden, which was partly in the right-of-way, which was just pasture. I remember on that right-of-way that the roads went East to West, and it was a little higher there. It was where he raised the peas and squash. My lord, how young was I? First grade or so? This is war time or so. The land in the big garden was broken up by a horse and plow…or team and plow…I don’t know where they got that. Just a two horse team…not a big one. Where the little garden was always kept with a sharp shovel…the first thing that went in the big garden were the early peas, and the new potatoes would be…you could open a hill and get a mess of potatoes…you’d eat that every Sunday. Those peas and the potatoes that mama would cream. And we had fresh parsley always around the round [ornamental] fish pond. Then the squash…they went in when the peas were gone….we never canned a squash, they went to the chickens. I was always relieved when squash season was over. I still don’t like them. They’re nasty. And then running up over a slope, then the garden ran North to South, and that’s the largest part of the garden…and that’s where that the cucumbers and the tomatoes and such were grown. That was the canning garden, yes. Rows and rows of produce. The cucumbers were the first thing you could can, then the tomatoes. The cantaloupes grew by the road, on the West side. At the very back, the garden ran East to West again, and that’s where the corn, black-eyed peas and purple hulls were raised.
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