• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1082 0

flat sorghum pan, following its mazelike divisions through a series of hairpin turns. Meanwhile I sawed wooden pallets into pieces small enough to throw on the fire that was roaring under the pan. All day long, under the brilliant blue sky in the cool fall air, with leaves spiraling down slowly in the stillness, the syrup bubbled and thickened and wound its way through the compartments until it reached the final holding section. Here Sylvan measured its temperature with a candy thermometer, and at the precise degree, let a portion drain into a small jug. When the jug was full, Ida replaced it with another, then another. Periodically Sylvan skimmed off greenish foam that rose to the surface and retrieved drowned yellow jackets with a dipper. I continued to cut and throw pallets while Ida continued to bottle the finished sorghum and Mary affixed the labels.

By day’s end, my wife and I were proud owners of several hundred jars of molasses with a retail value of about a thousand dollars.

Cooler autumn weather not only made for pleasant sorghum cooking, it also had one other welcome effect: it refrigerated our pumpkins. By the first day of October, over ninety percent were still intact. Customers began streaming in, and by the middle of the month almost no pumpkins remained. We sold about 400 at the full retail price of fifteen cents a pound, and 450 wholesale at seven cents a pound. To help us out, the Millers sold another hundred from their own stand at retail price.

The pumpkins netted about a thousand dollars, which, together with the prospective profits of the sorghum (still to be sold), put us in very good stead. By these means, and with a little extra work I had begun to do for Mr. Miller to trade for rent, we were able to grasp onto the goal that at first had seemed so daunting: to earn our living by the labors of our own hands.

As nature set the timetable for a single day, so did it, conveniently, for the whole year. Late fall provided Minimites leisure and cool weather for festive events. Barns would be built, new families would move in, other families would move out, young couples would marry, and old couples would take up residence in the Grossdaddi Haus. And there was still more spare time—time to take stock and reflect.

With cold weather came a pleasant hibernation. The first snow flurries, seen through the window on a day when we sat by the wood stove writing letters, filled us with indescribable serenity. Our cozy haven seemed so much cozier.

The season was not without subsistence activities, but they lacked the push of warm-weather work. They tended to be tasks that could not be performed at any other time or were not pressing. The pig we had been feeding through summer and fall, for instance, now approached his appointed destiny. We could slaughter and prepare the meat in the chill out-of-doors without threat of spoilage.

Another job saved for cold weather was fencing, and Mr. Miller allowed me to work off our rent by locating and cutting cedars from his woods. Cedars make good posts because the resin that permeates their trunks acts as a natural preservative. Seeking and cutting these sleek trees deep in the forest while inhaling the scent of fresh-cut cedar wood was patently satisfying.

And there were other off-season duties as well.

“One, two, three, four, five. Now release.”

Mary, who was flat on her back on the floor, relaxed her pelvis and her huge belly rose gently up again, like a bowl of bread dough.

“Again,” I said. “One, two, three, four, five. Release.” After sinking in a second time, the engorged abdominal region rose again and swayed. The exercise, described in the Lamaze manual we were using, was designed to stretch and flex Mary’s lower back, which had become stiff and sore from all the extra hoisting. It worked.

“I can’t believe how much better that feels,” Mary sighed after a few repetitions.

I leaned over to the bedside table for the Lamaze text, and my eye fell on the part that insists on the husband’s continuing marital relations as far as possible into pregnancy for