How fun is this!
I grew up in Louisville Kentucky. We didn't have a lot, but a whole lot of love from a large family. In the summer we would catch mason jars full of lightning bugs, make mud pies that my grandpa always sampled and go to play in the flooded street after a typical horrific afternoon summer storm that built up after a steamy humid day. Dad always had a huge garden and mom canned or froze everything. Because summers are so hot and we didn't have air conditioning a lot of the cooking for canning was done outside over an open fire. Me and my two sisters had to help, my favorites were pinching the skins off of the beets after they were blanched and dumped into a big wash tub of cool water from the garden hose and eating the salted cabbage we sliced up to be jarred for sour kraut. I spent a lot of my summer weeks at my Grandmother's farm in Elizabeth Town. My cousins and I had to rise early to get the cows in for milking that started at 6, shuck corn to feed the chickens, gather and clean eggs and help hoe the corn fields - that was well before they soaked corn seeds in round up! Often we would escape the summer heat by swinging on a wild grape vine and jumping into the creek down the hill. We had to take turns because someone always had to sit on the bank and sound a warning when a water moccasin or blue racer came floating down the creek. What a wonderful storybook childhood!