I'm reading an interesting and entertaining book, "The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History" by Nancy Hiller. https://nrhillerdesign.com/writing/books/

 

Not so much how to make a Hoosier Cabinet, but evolution of a kitchen from the 17th to 21st centuries (at least in what I've read.)

 

She made an interesting observation in economics in the introduction.   It reminded me a lot of the time my mother and grandmothers spent in the kitchen.   A neighbor offered her to come over an pick some of their cherries for a pie.   Overwhelmed by the picking, the neighbor filled up her bucket with some of his pickings.  Home and spent time pitting them, then making the crust and backing.   At her normal shop rate of $50/hr, she figured her time involvement was $170 for one pie, one she could have bought signed, sealed and delivered for $10..   And she did not need to grow, harvest and grind the grain (to say nothing of tree culture).

 

I could not help but draw the corollary that the same is true of the individual custom furniture maker vs. the automated factory.

Interesting comparison. 

Some just do it for fun. Some for love. 

I remember from my youth that we had two dairy cows.  My dad got up every morning before work and milked and fed them, same before dinner when he returned home.   For a few years, my job was the afternoon shift.  Of course, every Saturday in the winter was barn cleaning.  Making hay in the summer and early fall.   Milk was going for about 50-60 cents a gallon and I wonder just how economical that was.

 

We grew most of the fruits and vegetables that we ate.   What we didn't we did self-pick at the orchard.   Canned and froze food all summer.  Not much in the way of convenience foods.   I don' think that I ever ate at a restaurant until I was 12 and we took our first and only vacation for a week. I think we had two restaurant meals that week.  Vacation time was usually hoe hoe hoe time in the summer to get the gardens weeded and crops picked.

 

My mother took care of her mother who had developed Alzheimer's and incontinence about the time I started first grade.  That was in addition to all the household and garden chores.

21 minutes ago, kmealy said:

We grew most of the fruits and vegetables that we ate.   What we didn't we did self-pick at the orchard.   Canned and froze food all summer.  Not much in the way of convenience foods.   I don' think that I ever ate at a restaurant until I was 12 and we took our first and only vacation for a week

 

Grew up in pretty similar circumstances.  I was one of six kids.  Had my first piece of store bought pizza when I was a Sophomore in high school.  Spent a lot of time in the Summer picking, cleaning and canning fruits and vegetables.  It was a family affair, everyone chipped in and got the job done amid poking fun at each other.  Dad had a nickname Clyde Bingbong derived from bing cherries.  A guy he worked with had a tree and no one liked pitting cherries.  

My Father worked for a farmer who was one of 18 children. The farm where he grew up was still standing when I was going to a one room school house. The house was a shotgun house with two thirds kitchen and dining room. The bed room was lined with bunk beds where everyone slept. The older farmer told my Dad since they were so poor they raised a garden to supplement the food supply. He told Dad and I that all 18 of the kids were hoeing the garden when their Mother hollered out the back door supper was ready. He said all the kids dropped their hoes and ran to the house. He tripped over someone's hoe. When he got up he just went back to work because he figured the food would all be gone by the time he could get there.

Pie?!

 

yum. 

We had a little garden of about a half acre. A few rows of sweet corn, lots of taters, string beans and snap peas. Mom canned most of it. I was an only child till age 14, so I got plenty of hoe time. 

Best times were the days we'd butcher. Uncle's family, hired hands and families and us three would butcher 3 hogs a year, all on the same day. All hands on deck...all day. We made lye soap, stuffed sausages, deep fried pork rinds. We called them "cracklins" and, they were so good. Then, close after Christmas, we'd butcher two steers. No one had their own freezers so, the beef and pork went to a butcher who stored it all in lockers. Mom canned some of the beef. Delicious stuff. Some of the cured bacon, she'd put with the beans and can it all together. Also, mighty good. 

In the late spring, we'd castrate the piglets. Always end up with enough oysters for a big get together potluck. Good thing it was potluck. Don't think the gals partook of the oysters. 

Good memories. 

Canning vegetables is much the same story. I do the canning at our house, and I would pick the beans the evening before, akways hoped to get 2 bushels from what I planted...and like the comment about the grain and tree culture, I didn't even count the gardening effort. Anyway, it would take 12-14 hours of work the following day to get them washed, snapped, and canned...and that was using 2 pressure canners. All that and i would have maybe 36 quarts of beans. My mom always canned veggies to save money, but I doubt she ever thought of the value of the labor involved.

i have heard more than once the advice:  "find something you love to do and you won't work a day in your life"

 

mostly true.  if you find something you love to do and that pays you money, you'll enjoy everyday.  and if you find something you love to do that does not pay you money, you better have saved some money from some prior job you hated.

 

 

5 hours ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

All that and i would have maybe 36 quarts of beans. My mom always canned veggies to save money, but I doubt she ever thought of the value of the labor involved.

I don't think any of us counted the cost of the labor assuming we were home anyway. It just became another chore that needed to be done each summer. My grandmother canned green beans (& beets, corn, peas, carrots potatoes, okra, apples, berries,) and so on mainly in a "hot water bath" on a wood cook stove during the heat of the summer/ fall. I never her heard her complain once. I wish I could have one batch of her green beans again...so GOOD!

 

My argument today is we know what chemicals have been put on the crop (none or organic based only) and nothing artificial has been used to preserve the product. About the only way I can eat frozen green beans of any brand is to place them in the crock pot all day with a few pieces of bacon tossed in and a little chicken stock.

I can remember transplanting tomatoes, weeding them, harvesting,peeling,  pureeing, cooking down to reduce, and pressure canning.   All in a house without air conditioning (or even shade).   Now I got to Costco and buy a #10 can of tomato sauce for $2.74

21 hours ago, kmealy said:

I can remember transplanting tomatoes, weeding them, harvesting,peeling,  pureeing, cooking down to reduce, and pressure canning.   All in a house without air conditioning (or even shade).   Now I got to Costco and buy a #10 can of tomato sauce for $2.74

That was about $0.10-$0.15 then, which was a half hours wages.

Herb

Edited June 9, 20178 yr by Dadio

not everything worth doing has to be done for money.

 

do you charge your wife to tell her you love her every morning?  do your kids pay you after you spank them?

 

do you collect payment from dinner guests?

48 minutes ago, DAB said:

do you charge your wife to tell her you love her every morning?  do your kids pay you after you spank them?

 

do you collect payment from dinner guests?

No, but all good ideas worth considering

2 hours ago, DAB said:

not everything worth doing has to be done for money.

 

do you charge your wife to tell her you love her every morning?  do your kids pay you after you spank them?

 

do you collect payment from dinner guests?

You are right Dab, it was part of living then, we did all of what was said above, but then the wives stayed home and the husbands made the living. But the wives and kids did the work at home and the farm. When I was 6 years old I was raking hay alongside my mother when Dad was at work, and she did all the washing ironing dishes scrubbing, baking, cooking, sewing,mending, canning, us kids worked along side her,plus all the chores and chopping the wood, fixing fences digging ditches,weeding the garden, there were no days off, dawn til dark, rain ,shine.

 

Herb

reminds me of a movie (don't recall which one), pair of old guys had just finished building a fence on their property, next to the road, and a young yuppie barrels into the fence, destroying it.  he jumps out and offers to pay for the fence.  their reply:  "how are you going to pay me to fix my own fence?"  valid question.  they didn't get paid the first time, so how are you going to pay them the second time (and obviously, a young yuppie has no skills to fix it himself, he just thinks he can throw money at any problem)?

 

we know the cost of everything, the value of nothing.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........................................................................

And then to pick of all those big fat tomato hornworms....

On ‎6‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 6:52 PM, kmealy said:

I could not help but draw the corollary that the same is true of the individual custom furniture maker vs. the automated factory

I venture to say that for most of us, we get more enjoyment from the "journey" than from the "destination".