KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
We raised two kinds of beans. We ate green beans, like the kind you see in the store, every day. You could open them up and take out the beans, like peas. They tasted wonderful when we ate them raw. In most of the bean section, though, we let the beans ripen on the vine. Picking the pods off the vines was a big job because they grew so plentifully. We all used to sit for days after picking to open the pods and take out the beans. We let them dry out even more and then stored them in containers. The beans lasted the whole year, although we bought additional beans from farmers. We also grew potatoes. Because we liked to eat them when they were young, we used to take one or two potatoes from each plant, and a few days later new ones would be ready for us to dig up. I remember that we grew a certain kind of scallion, from which we took the green shoots off the top and left the bulb in the soil until the end of the season. We bought onions in braided bundles from the farmers; they, too, lasted the whole winter. In the spring, my father would send people from our mill to dig up the garden, make the sections and walkways, rake it, and prepare it for planting. Then, under my mother’s supervision, we would plant the seeds and maintain the garden. We all worked in the garden, and it was a labor of love. This garden was for vege- tables; we did not grow flowers in it, but flowers grew around the house. Before the end of each summer, we would buy apples and pears to cut into sections and dry in the sun. These, too, would last through the winter. Among my favorite fruits were the plums, dried whole into prunes. Besides buying apples we also picked apples, although we did not have our own orchard, and put them into drums and made delicious pickled apples. I have never seen that type of pick- led apples in the United States. We grew other things, like strawberries that were sweet as sugar. The farmers used to come around selling blueberries, strawberries, and all types of fruit; some of them were picked in the woods, where they grew wild.
44
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online