Homegrown Tomatoes and More
By Darla Bracken
Well, it’s the first of August and hopefully by now you have tasted some of Friona’s vegetable bounty. Homegrown vegetables from our numerous gardens both in town and in the country. (Thank Heaven for water in a dry year). This is one column that needs no pictures. The mental images that these memories will bring will make your mouth water just thinking about them.
Take the tomatoes, or ‘maters’ as some folks call them; there is nothing like them. Hothouse tomatoes may come close, but they are still not quite there. Can’t you remember eating them warm from the sun fresh off the vine? And eating a lot of them, sometimes way too many of them... Platefuls of sliced tomatoes are the perfect addition to any summertime meal. (We tolerate tomatoes the rest of the year waiting for the really good ones in summer.) Mine and Rex’s first attempt at growing tomatoes was nothing less than phenomenal! We bought 24 plants thinking that probably not all of them would live. We planted them on Bracken land (in town) that had never been cultivated. 22 Beef Steak tomato plants lived and produced bountifully. We had tomatoes everywhere enough for 4 or 5 families, maybe more. We gave away all we could, canned some, juiced some (this was before the days that homemade hot sauce was so popular) and made chow-chow out of the multitude of green tomatoes we also had. That was wonderful. I will never forget those big, beautiful beefsteak tomatoes.
All of us can remember tomatoes, but that’s not all. How many of you can remember picking black-eyed peas and more particularly SHELLING black-eyed peas? Talk about bounty–when a neighboring farmer called you to pick peas–that was a serious responsibility. Even as a child, I was taught and knew how to pick carefully, cleanly and well. The vines were the bearing producers and had to be protected for the next batch. Then the fun began with mounds and mounds of peas to shell. Everybody my age and older to 20 years younger knows about shelling peas. My children know about shelling peas although they never had as many to shell as when I was a child. Nothing tastes like home canned black-eyed peas either. I can remember those quarts of peas being so welcome in the fall and winter with hot cornbread. There was always a fresh batch of ‘overs’ cooked to eat at canning time–mighty tasty! Green beans were a snap compared to peas; it almost seemed like child’s play after shelling peas. They were much harder to pick than black-eyed peas. I can remember as a young married adult being called to pick beans–our long rows can seem quite daunting when picking by yourself!
Corn–those golden ears of fresh-picked sweet corn and its buttery on-the-cob goodness also was a summertime treat. We’d have corn suppers or ‘feeds’ where that was all we ate and it was so good. Corn is such a beautiful crop growing in the field, too, as ‘high as an elephant’s eye’ if we had any elephants. I even liked field corn, myself, although it had much bigger and firmer kernels.
Then there’s also the southern treat of okra. Rex and I had a couple of experiences growing okra. Once in our first garden on Jackson Street when I cut a mess of okra from our garden on October 31st to serve to Rex’s sister who was visiting from Alaska. Then at our house on Cleveland Street we planted outside the fence next to the street that year–new ground again. I could pick three-5 gallon buckets full of okra from that small space! Enough for 4 or 5 other families–thank goodness we had others to share the bounty. There was also: yellow buttery squash for frying, boiling, baking and sharing; Zucchini for baking, boiling, shredding for cakes, and sharing plus mustard greens and leaf lettuce for wilted salads. There were green onions and cucumbers for pickling and eating fresh. My dad has raised some pretty nice gardens in his retirement years on Pierce Street.
Cantaloupes and watermelons–now that’s a summer duo for you. Most everyone I know loves watermelon and most of them love cantaloupe also in various eating styles: with or without salt, with or without black pepper. This treat is the most fun to eat and somehow it doesn’t really seem like summer if you have not had some watermelon or cantaloupe. Again the off-season fruits are there for us to enjoy now, but they are not the same. Pecos cantaloupes have quite a reputation for being the best–sometimes sandy soil makes a difference in some things–but I’d still take our soil any day.
Peanuts and sand plums from Portales finished out the year. I remember being surprised at the people who didn’t know that peanuts were an underground crop since I had known that as a child from picking up peanuts behind the diggers. Nothing is quite like the smell of parching peanuts in the shell either (Steve Bavousett did that for years at Plains Hardware every fall). Sand plums were a much sought-after treat, but snaky endeavor much as wild blackberries were in Arkansas. You had to be pretty dedicated or know someone who was to get to enjoy them–but the taste is simply unforgettable.
When Friona farmers used to grow commercial vegetable crops–potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage, we had a rather remarkable, state-of-the-art vegetable processing center or ‘tater shed’ as it was called, down near the railroad at the southern end of Columbia Street. My aunt from California would see Friona Carrots in her grocery stores and would always want them because they were the BEST! I can remember going to the fields after the diggers to gather red potatoes. I was always impressed by their beautiful pink color fresh from the earth. Enjoy our bounty! Neighbors sharing, people caring and all of us faring very well this hundred years.