Tecumseh news: Nov. 22, 2017

By the time many of you read these items, Tom Turkey will have made his supreme sacrifice for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner far and wide. 

Happy birthday to my great-grandson Keith Davis of Udall today, Nov. 22. He’s 38. He and his daughter Jaycee keep in close contact; she is a teenager living with her mother near Lebanon.

Thanks to daughter Kris for filling the birdfeeders with sunflower seed. There are dozens of little finch birds at the feeder as I write. The wind is blowing, the feeder is spinning around, but the little finch birds hang on. I also have one pear left on one of my two pear trees. I’ll have to watch it. If it falls to the ground it will be devoured by the animals. 

In my past gardening days, I grew a row of sunflowers and planted my climbing green beans next to them to climb on them (and, as I’ve said before, a favorite variety was the cut-shorts). I have some cut-shorts for seed in my freezer now, so in the spring I hope to get some planted for the coming year. It’s amazing that you can take them out of the freeze and put them in a damp place in the kitchen window and usually they will sprout. Or you plant them right into the ground. 

Speaking of gardens, some of my best memories are of Mearl and Beulah Satterfield’s delicious corn; they furnished hundreds of dozens of ears for many folks to can and freeze. Their old garden spot, about an acre, is quite bare now, I feel sure. But what a blessing it was for many of us through the years. Mearl would pick the best ears to sell, leaving Beulah and me to glean the remainder – which was great for us. His customers came from all over the area to buy their corn. Beulah and I would have a pickup bed full. I would bring it home and shuck it, and the cows enjoyed the shucks. I would can seven quarts at a time in my pressure canner and would also fill the freezer. I think there are still some bags of frozen corn in my freezer right now. 

Leaves are covering me up out here now! But I like this time of year (although spring may be better). My chrysanthemums are still blooming, but we need rain.

I enjoyed my walnut crop in past years. I’ve read that this year hulled walnuts are bringing $15 per hundred pounds. In past years I was only paid $3 per hundred, making it cheap labor, but it was our only extra fall income. Bernie Poe’s boys had a huller. I would sell some and bring a bag home for the winter and crack them myself. I had a special rock with a low place in it that held the nut, and I cracked them with a hammer.

Many years ago, my father helped my mother, Jennie Ebrite Crawford, harvest walnuts from our trees and then helped her hull and crack them, picking out the kernels. I am blessed to have the treadle Singer sewing machine she bought with the $65 she saved up from her walnut money. She died in 1935 and I think the machine was purchased in 1934. It’s a treasure of mine and still makes a perfect stitch. My grandfather sold Stark fruit trees and we had four large walnut trees I believe he ordered from Stark. They produced larger walnuts on them than some of the “wild” trees.

Matt Dixon told me he got off his medicines that were keeping him excessively handicapped. So far, he’s had good improvement. Our prayers are for him and and his wife, Cimone, to have good holidays and better health all winter long.

I enjoyed a visit from my son Lyndon and Linaia and their two little granddaughters, Chloe and Quinn Wright, who came from Fair Grove Sunday to spend the day with me. 

Sandi Chrietzberg Richards is coming soon from Ben Wheeler, Texas, to visit my daughter Kris.  They graduated from Gainesville together and were best friends 

Call me with any news, 679-4148, and have a happy Thanksgiving.