Chapter Thirty

Harvest Season

In Southwest Michigan, harvest season was not just something that happened on a calendar.

You could feel it coming.

Roadside stands began appearing along the roads with hand-painted signs out front.

Sweet corn.

Peaches.

Pears.

Tomatoes.

Apples.

Sometimes the signs would say something like twelve ears of corn for a dollar, though it may have been even cheaper than that back then. I don't remember the exact prices anymore. What I remember is that my mother noticed every one of those signs.

To me, they were just signs.

To her, they were opportunity.

My mother was always watching for ways to stretch what we had. She clipped coupons. She watched sales. She knew when fruit and vegetables were in season. She knew when something was worth stopping for.

At the time, I probably thought she just liked stopping at fruit stands.

Looking back, I understand it differently.

She was feeding a family.

A very large family.

We didn't survive by accident. We survived because my mother knew how to turn summer into winter food.

There were U-pick farms too. Green beans, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, pears, and apples all seemed to have their own time. I can't remember exactly what came first or what came last. Maybe strawberries came first. Maybe green beans. Maybe sweet corn.

What I remember is that there was always something ready.

Sometimes we picked fruit with Aunt Helen and Uncle Jim. Helen was my mother's sister. I don't honestly know if the trees belonged to them, or if they just lived near the owner and knew where we could pick. Memory gets fuzzy that way.

What I do remember are the ladders.

We kids would climb up and pick fruit from the trees, filling buckets and baskets while the adults worked below. I remember reaching into branches, looking for the good ones, the ones that were ripe enough to take home.

I sometimes wonder now whether we were really helping or whether the adults were just trying to burn off our energy.

The truth was probably both.

We were helping. Maybe not as fast as adults could have done it, but we were helping. And while we were helping, we were learning something without knowing we were learning it.

Food did not just appear.

Somebody had to pick it.

Somebody had to wash it.

Somebody had to cut it, cook it, can it, freeze it, and store it.

In the orchards, there was another sound I remember.

Every so often, a loud boom would echo across the fields.

The first few times it probably startled me. After a while, it became part of the background of harvest season.

The orchards had barrels rigged up to propane. Every so many seconds, gas would fill the barrel and ignite.

Boom.

The sound was meant to scare off birds before they could eat the fruit.

To a kid, it sounded like someone was firing a cannon across the countryside.

That was Michigan harvest season to me.

Roadside stands.

Ladders in fruit trees.

Buckets filling up.

Orchard cannons booming in the distance.

And then everything came home to my mother's kitchen.

That was when the real work began.

During canning season, the kitchen became something else entirely. It was not just a kitchen anymore. It was a workshop. It was a factory. It was the center of the house.

There were jars everywhere.

There were pots of boiling water.

There were vegetables on the table and fruit on the counters.

My mother worked relentlessly.

I don't remember her complaining. I remember her working.

Me, Ben, Elizabeth, and Tom were often the ones I remember helping. Not all twelve kids. By then the older ones had their own lives, their own work, their own places to be.

But the younger ones still at home could be recruited.

Green beans were one of the jobs.

We would sit around the table and snap them. Break off one end. Break off the other. Snap the bean into pieces the right size for canning.

Over and over.

Bean after bean.

Bucket after bucket.

It was simple work, but it had to be done.

Sweet corn was another project. Mom would boil it first, or blanch it, as she called it. Then we would cut the kernels off the cob with a knife.

Rows of kernels would fall away into bowls.

Cob after cob.

Bowl after bowl.

Tomatoes had their own process, and that may have been my favorite job to help with.

My mother had a colander-like strainer with a wooden handle. You put the tomatoes in, turned the wooden crank, and smashed the juice and pulp through while the seeds and skins were left behind.

I loved that thing.

To me, it was almost like a machine.

Tomatoes went in one way, and bright red juice came out another.

I didn't think about how much work it saved my mother. I just liked being part of it.

Strawberry season may have been my favorite.

Not surprising, really.

Michigan strawberries were amazing. To this day, I have never had strawberries that tasted as sweet and as good as the ones from Southwest Michigan. Store-bought strawberries in Texas do not do them justice.

It wasn't just strawberries either.

The apples were better.

The peaches were better.

The sweet corn was better.

For years I wondered if maybe I remembered them that way only because I was a kid. Memory can do that. It can polish things and make the past seem sweeter than it was.

But years later, when we spent two years back in Michigan, I stopped at a farm stand down the road and bought sweet corn.

One bite settled the argument.

I had not imagined it.

It really was that good.

My mother made two kinds of strawberry jam.

There was the cooked jam, the kind that could be canned and stored on shelves.

Then there was freezer jam.

Freezer jam was my favorite.

It was mostly strawberries and sugar, and because it was not cooked the same way, it tasted like fresh strawberries. It tasted like summer on toast.

I loved that stuff.

The cooked jam had one advantage though.

When it cooked, a pink foam would rise to the top.

Mom would skim it off before putting the jam into jars. Most people probably would not think much of it.

I thought it was treasure.

She would put that foam into a little jar or container and let it cool. Later, I would spread it on toast.

It was amazing.

Maybe it tasted better because there was never very much of it.

Maybe it felt special because you only got it if you happened to be there when the jam was made.

Either way, I loved it.

Mom also made strawberry shortcake.

Not the fancy kind.

Ours was biscuits with mashed strawberries and sugar poured over the top.

I was never that excited about the biscuits.

The strawberries were the point.

The whole house seemed busy during harvest season. It was not sad work. It was not something I remember as a burden.

It was busy and happy.

There was always something going on. Something to pick. Something to wash. Something to cut. Something to taste.

We got to eat some of the harvest too, and that probably had a lot to do with why I remember it so fondly.

A kid is not thinking about food security.

A kid is thinking about strawberries.

A kid is thinking about sweet corn.

A kid is thinking about peaches so good the juice runs down your hand.

While Mom's world was the kitchen, Dad's world was the basement.

He was busy fixing televisions.

That was his work.

Downstairs there was his bench, his tools, his tubes, his parts, and whatever television someone had brought him to repair.

Mom was upstairs turning produce into food for winter.

Dad was downstairs fixing things other people might have thrown away.

They were different kinds of work, but looking back, they came from the same place.

Both of my parents were stretching what we had.

Both were trying to make things last.

Both were doing what had to be done.

When the jars were finished, they did not stay in the kitchen.

They went downstairs to the fruit cellar.

The fruit cellar was in the back left corner of the basement, past the laundry room. It was darker there. Colder.

Almost like stepping into a different season.

The shelves lined the walls of that room, and during harvest season they slowly filled up.

Tomatoes.

Green beans.

Corn.

Peaches.

Pears.

Jam.

Jar after jar.

Row after row.

I remember thinking how pretty they were sitting on those shelves.

The red of the tomatoes.

The green of the beans.

The gold of the peaches.

The softer color of pears.

As a child, I didn't see hundreds of hours of work.

I didn't see budgeting.

I didn't see survival.

I saw beauty.

Years later, I understand more.

Those jars were not decorations.

They were security.

They were planning.

They were my mother's determination made visible.

They were one of the reasons a family as large as ours made it through another Michigan winter.

One thing I miss in Texas is that rhythm.

There are farms here, but it is not the same. At least not where I live. There are not roadside stands everywhere announcing what is ready. There is not the same feeling of seasons arriving through food.

In Michigan, there was a time for strawberries.

A time for sweet corn.

A time for peaches.

A time for apples.

You looked forward to them because they did not last forever.

Maybe that was part of what made them special.

Harvest season was noisy.

Harvest season was messy.

Harvest season was work.

But when I remember it, I mostly remember it as happy.

The orchards boomed in the distance.

The kitchen was alive.

Mom was working.

We were helping.

Dad was downstairs fixing televisions.

And in the back corner of the basement, past the laundry room, the fruit cellar slowly filled with summer.

At the time, I thought those jars were beautiful.

Looking back, I still do.