In the summers of my childhood I learned to depend on Mother Nature and her bountiful gifts. we, as children, learned to take advantage of everything we could. We picked blackberries along in the briars that grew in the pastures, roadsides or wherever they happened to be. Mother canned the berries in Mason jars for pies or other such sweets to be made in the winter. After she had used all of her Mason jars she made jams and jellies from the fresh berries left over. The were stored in jars we begged from neighbors, who knew we used them and saved them for us. There was also a thicket of wild plum trees that grew in our pasture and from them Mother made delicious plum jelly. The big yellow and red plums were good to eat. We would pick them on a very hot day, then take them to the spring to pour water on top of the plums, and then eat them when they weren’t hot anymore. They were very sweet. We also made apple jelly. There happened to be a big apple orchard about a mile from our home. The owner gave us all of the apple drops, those apples that fell from the trees before they matured. Mother would peel these apples, putting the good parts on a board in the sunshine to dry. the boards had little strips around it to keep the apples from falling off. They would sit in the sun for several hours. when they were dry they were put into airtight jars and save to make dried apple pies in the winter. The peelings were cooked and the juice was squeezed from them to make jelly. Only the bad or rotten spots were thrown away.
