Providing food for the table was an important task for the pioneers. Most of the food that was used was raised on the land where they lived. Some of the commodities were purchased at the stores but not very much. A very important source of food was the gardens which provided fresh vegetables in season as well as food for the winter which was canned or dried. Wild game was available in quantities, too, as well as fish in the streams.
Mrs. Posey tells this story about her first garden.
"What a wonderful garden we had the first year! It was planted on new breaking, of course, and some of the neighbors thought my mother was crazy because she planted corn and tomatoes and other such vegetables but I wonder if they did not wish they had been as crazy as she, when we reaped the reward that fall. Great ripe tomatoes as large as a soup bowl, pumpkins, squash, citrons, enough to supply us with the lovely golden preserves all winter, and all kinds of other vegetables, too."
The Kallbergs tell this story:
"Shortly after Will left to go to work, two of his brothers came over to his farm and plowed a fire break around the house and the sod barn which Will had put up for the cow. It was in this plowed ground that Adah made her garden and a very good one it was as she had plenty of time to spend on it. She planted radishes, onions, turnips, carrots, beans and potatoes. The beans, Will's mother had brought with her from Minnesota and they were highly prized. She gave Adah a teacupful of the brown beans and a baking powder can full of the white beans. Adah planted them carefully to be sure not to lose a plant. When she threshed them out in out in the fall, she had a heaping dishpan full of the brown beans and two heaping dishpans full of the white beans; they had also eaten a good many green through the summer. The other garden seeds Will had purchased in town at the Strong-Chase store.
In 1885 crop was poor due to the dry summer, however, the garden was again a success. They had enough potatoes for winter and other vegetables as well. Will and Mr. King dug a root cellar, putting a floor over it. They used this to store the potatoes and other vegetables during the winter."
Meat, not bread, was the staff of life for the frontier farmers. Those who didn't as yet have much livestock lived largely on deer, grouse, pheasants, geese, duck, rabbits, and any other wild game that could be found.
Apple trees soon came to be grown on many farms, and this was made into cider, dried apples and apple butter, apple pie came to be the almost universal dessert.
Some farms had a cow or two to furnish them with milk. The cream would be skimmed off and churned into butter. Some of the butter was used but many times it was taken to the stores for some extra cash. The going price was about 45¢ a pound.
Chickens, too, could be found on the farms. This product too was saved to sell at the stores for about 45¢ a dozen for the eggs.
The pioneers of Foster County traveled to Jamestown to obtain supplies for the winter that they had not raised on the farm. Here's an example of a list:
100 pounds corn meal
100 pounds white flour
Pail of syrup
Dried slab of side of pork
Baking powder
One-ton hard coal
Condensed milk
One-half ton soft coal
Two loads of wood from Hawksnest
About in February they would get hungry for fresh meat. The only thing obtainable at that time was rabbit. They set a trap in the evening and the next morning the trap, rabbit and all were gone. The men hitched up a team and the three men and a dog started trailing the rabbit. They tracked it for 10 miles and finally caught it. They took it to the shanty and dressed it, and Mr. Bort says he has never had anything taste better in his life. (Holcomb and Bort story)
Drinking water was a problem for the early settlers. The Holcomb brothers and Bort took water from sloughs when they first arrived. They dipped it out then strained it through a cloth to get the "wrigglers" and toads out. Later they dug a well about 20 feet deep.
The wells were usually shallow, dug round or square and either walled up with stone or curbed with boards. Pumps were too expensive for the pioneers and so they used a rope and a bucket suspended from an iron pulley to draw the water from the well.
The pioneers were very hospitable people. The C.K. Wings would have a "baked beans and brown bread supper" on Saturday evening. All their friends were welcome to drop in and enjoy the east coast style supper.
Pork though was the most frequent meat on the pioneer table. Hogs were produced relatively easily, since they were allowed to forage in the wilds for virtually all their food. Salt pork was standard fare the year 'round. Beef was a secondary meat. Every farmer slaughtered his own animals, usually with the help of neighbors. After the crops were harvested, the fall seeding done, the winter's supply of firewood cut and piled, butchering was in order.
The farmers would gather on some chilly November day. A 40-50 gallon kettle was hung over an outdoor fire to heat water for scalding the carcasses. Another kettle was used to prepare the lard. The animals, mostly hogs but also oxen, old cows and sheep, were slaughtered in early morning so the meat would be hard and cold by the time it was pickled at nightfall.
Butchering was a very busy time for the farm wives. The meat had to be pickled, smoked, dried, salted, or potted so it would keep throughout the year. Pork was preserved in barrels of brine or in tubs packed with lard. Hams, shoulders and sides were hung in the smoke-house to cure. There was sausage to make, lard to be rendered out, and tallow to save. Hog meat was made into a tremendous variety of food products - salt pork, bacon, ham, scrapple, headcheese, cracklings, spare ribs, jowls, pickled pig's feet, and many others. A supply of beef too was dried, corned or smoked, but the backbone of the farm fare was hog meat.
Some people used the bladders as balloons for the kids. The brains were prepared and were considered a gourmet dish.
The standard cereal meal was corn meal. It was consumed mainly as corn pone or hoecake, but corn meal mush and milk were staple foods. Wheat was a cash crop and rarely used to make bread for the farmer's table. Some used rye for their bread.
Although there were no nutrition experts in those days to tell the pioneers about vitamins, minerals and such, they well understood the need to eat quantities of fruits and vegetables throughout the year. Pioneer families picked huge quantities of wild fruits and berries in season. They were eaten fresh or preserved by drying and sometimes by packing in honey or sugar.
Sauerkraut was an important source of vitamins for many farm families during the winter months. It was made by packing cabbage in salt and changing the brine from time to time as the cabbage fermented. Sweet corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, and other vegetables were dried.
One popular way to raise money has always been to put on a dinner or supper, or breakfast of various kinds. As early as 1884 the organization of the Congregational church was putting on an oyster feed when something rather unusual happened. This story appeared in the Independent:
"This is the story as related publicly. In 1884 the old Kirkwood hotel building was unoccupied. The Congregational church had just been organized and a ladies' aid society was also formed. The women started in at once to raise money. A great crowd had gathered at the oyster supper. Many stray and homeless cats had found a haven away from the winter's winds under the hotel floor. A pail of oysters solidly frozen had been shipped to Carrington for the event by a relative in Baltimore of one of the early members of the church organization here. The pail was placed on the stove to thaw out and while the women were busy at other tasks, one of the kittens from under the building got into the kitchen onto the stove and stuffed itself so full of oysters that it died on the spot!
The women returned to the stove to be horrified by the sight of the floating cat. But the hungry crowd was clamoring for stew and it was decided that what a person didn't know didn't matter so the kitty was fished out and the remaining oysters dumped into the stew broth.
Several hundred people partook; most of them acclaimed the stew the finest they had ever eaten and the women who had prepared the meal just grinned inwardly and kept their tongues at half mast."
It was forty years before the story was released. The conclusion was that women really can keep a secret!
A story in the Independent September 25, 1924 issue tells about a man by the name of B.W. Elder who was going around the region buying old horses. He had an order to supply 4,000 to 8,000 old nags that were to be shipped to Europe to be canned. The horses were being bought for $15 a piece. The story prompted a member of the staff of the Jamestown Alert to a poetical prognostication of what would happen to old Fords. This is what he wrote:
In days of old, so we are told,
Great-grandpa thought it grand,
To have an ox to haul the rocks
And journey o'er the land.
An old white nag for gand-a' drag
the buckboard into town,
In the ox's place, with faster pace,
He'd turn the furrow down.
Now a new machine by gasoline,
Takes Pa to town by sprockets
The horse and ox both in one box
As good corn beef, to markets.
When pa departs, for other parts,
Of which there is little known,
He will, no doubt, no new wings sprout,
For he will then have flown.
But who I ask, will have the task,
This benzine rig to pickle,
That it will go as beef, you know,
I gladly bet a nickel.
The people were cautioned not to read the news article aloud at the dinner table. A packinghouse was set up in Chicago to take care of the task of canning the meat and sending it on to Europe.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 54