Applesauce
On the farm we had a couple of cows that dad milked. We'd pasteurize the milk and use it for drinking and using for cooking. Occasionally dad would skim off the thick cream that settles on top and make butter. Churning butter is time consuming and can be accomplished in a variety of ways. I remember him using everything from a jar he'd rock back and forth to a hand cranked churn. Dad would bake up some sourdough bread and we'd eat it straight from the oven with the fresh butter which would melt into the bread creating a warm delicious treat. Mmmm the smell and flavor was heavenly.
Dad would plant a garden and when harvest time came we'd all gather the fruits and vegetables. Mom would spend days canning what dad grew. I remember one year when we had an abundance of crops and mom traded some of the excess to a neighbor for a bunch of apples. I was assigned the task of peeling them while mom prepared them and made jelly and applesauce. It took several days for me to accomplish this chore.
I had placed the apple peelings inside a barrel and after a few days, having forgot to dispose of them, they started smelling kind if bad. Mom told me to do something with them, so along with the other canning leftovers, I took them down to the hog pen and poured it in the trough.
After completing the rest of my chores, I went down to the barn to go for a ride on Kit our family's mule. I didn't ride Princess our horse because she was bigger than Kit and I couldn't saddle her. As I got to the barn, I looked into the hog pen and noticed that the all the hogs seemed to be sick. Fearing that I'd poisoned them with the old apple peelings, I ran toward the house screaming for dad who can rushing out of the house alarmed by my screams. I breathlessly told him about my fears and we went down to the hog pen to check.
Dad looked the hogs over then asked me what I'd fed them. He could see that there was something really seriously wrong with the hogs and he questioned me in detail about what I'd done. When I told him about the apple peelings I'd fed them he started laughing and told me that most likely they'd be all right.
Thankfully I hadn't poisoned the hogs. Keeping the apple peelings in the barrel for several days had caused them to ferment. The hogs weren't sick, they were drunk. Thus it was that at the age of eleven I had my first lesson on the effects of alcohol.
Randall J. Beers
© April 12th 2000
