During the 1930�s my mother canned a lot of food for our use. I loved the cabbage season. We would gather the cabbage heads and bring them to the back porch, where they would be washed and cut with the cabbage cutter.

The cabbage cutter was a wooden affair that had a knife fastened to it. The cabbage head was pushed across it and would be cut into shreds. Mom would not let us kids touch it because she was afraid that we would cut ourselves.

J.W. and I would fill the buckets with water and keep the trash carried away. Sis would fill the large crocks with the sliced cabbage. Then a heavy piece of wood was placed on top, and a large stone placed on top of that. Mom would pour the pickling solution in, and a clean cloth was then tied around the top of the crock.

Us boys would then peel and eat the cores from the cabbage heads. I get stomach aches just thinking about all that cabbage

All the trimmings was fed to the pigs and sometimes to the cows.

After a period of time (I don't know how long) the now pickled cabbage would be removed from the crock and put into jars and cooked in a pressure cooker. Boy that was good sauerkraut. I have never tasted any since that was that good.

Mom would peel apples, slice them very thin, and we would put them on a clean sheet spread on the roof to dry. These she kept to make fine apple pies during the winter. Such things are what occupies the mind of a growing boy, and sometimes, an old man who remembers them.

- - Tom