Revised 1997 May 27
I am seeking the aid of former teachers and students to make this report historically accurate. Some details are likely to change.

Claude Eddleman Farm (1939-1958)

Canning and Drying

We grew and preserved most of the foods we ate. This page covers drying fruit and canning. We dried very little fruit, but we canned on huge scale and dad insured that we had the proper equipment. Occasionally other families borrowed our equipment or gave me 25 cents to come to their house for a day and run the equipment. I pioneered some of the methods and had difficulty getting my mother to permit their use.

Canning Peaches. The main innovation I introduced to my family was the use of lye to remove the skins of the peaches. Peeling peaches with hot water containg a little lye if faster than hand or machine peeling. Since only the skin is removed, no fruit flesh is wasted with the peel as in hand peeling. I was an avid reader and that included reading the labels on the lye cans while mom was soapmaking. The Red Devil lye labels suggested using lye to remove the skins of fruit, but mom was concerned there could be a risk because lye is very caustic. My opportunity came at the close of WWII when I was 13. Gasoline rationing was cancelled the day after the war ended. My sister Dorothy and her family immediately drove the 300 miles from Michigan City on the southern tip of Lake Michigan to visit us. They invited Mom to come home with them for a week's visit. She wanted to see the Lake and make the journey of the whole length of Indiana, but one of my seedling peach trees was loaded with five bushes of ripe peaches. I insisted my sister Margaret and I could can them. Mom assumed I was going to use the mechanical peach peeler as always. I usually peeled while Mom and Margaret cut them open, removed the pit and packed them in half-gallon (2 liter) jars for hot water bath processing. Mom felt her job was at home, but she knew Margaret (age 11) could can the peachers. As usual we canned the peaches in the cool basement on a hug wood burning kitchen range (stove). Margaret and I canned all the peaches the next day while Dad was working off the farm installing plumbing or other work somewhere. That was one of my proudest accomplishments as a teenager for the peaches were good and looked better than hand peeled peaches.

Elderberry Jelly. Another canning project I introduced was making elderberry jelly. Elderberry is shrub which grows as a few bushes in most fencerows. The deep black-red fruits are 5 mm berries borne in a huge .15 meter cluster. The easily fall off the cluster and taste somewhat good when eaten raw out of hand. The taste is not very exciting and no one picks them. Thus, huge amounts of fruit goes to waste every year. I finally talked Mom into making a sample lot of jelly from them. She was afraid the taste would be poor and only made a couple small jars. The taste was superb; a little like black raspberries, but much easier to pick. The next year we made several gallons of the jelly but it was barely fit to eat. The problem was that by the time we got the berries shelled off the clusters and cooked to release and pasteurize the juice it was too late to make the jelly. Next day we made the jelly, but the juice had slightly soured or picked up flavor from the container overnight. For no good reason, we never made elderberry jelly again. One problem is that the seeds are so small it is difficult to separate the seeds and skins from the juice and pulp by forcing the cooked fruit thru a strainer. Recently, I tried again leaving the seeds and skins in the jelly. The jelly had good flavor, but the seeds were so profuse that the jelly was not very palatable.

Which reminds me of a true story. A lady at New Salisbury formerly grew and sold hundreds of gallons of thornless backberries each year. She often made jam and jelly from any unsold fruit at the day. Her daughter and granddaughter arrived one evening and enjoyed the aroma of the fresh jelly. The 4-year old granddaughter was delighted to get a fresh blackberry jelly sandwich. However, a few moments later, she was back in the kitchen saying, "Here, Grandma, I don't want this. It has rocks in it." Getting all the seeds out of berry jams can be difficult!

Wild Blackberries. Like many families, we picked pails of wild backberries most summers. Mrs. Ritchie's farm was twice as large as ours and extend along the north side of our farm then on farther west and also south west of our farm. Making an L-shape on two sides of our farm. Her husband had died a few years earlier and the poorest, rockiest fields could not attract anyone to farm those fields west of our farm. They were in the process of growing up in brush. There were some pretty nice stands of Rubus alleghinns , a wild blackberry. After Mrs. Ritchie and her schoolteacher daughters had picked the fruit they wanted, she invited our family to pick the remainder. Since our farm had only a few blackberry plants, we appreciated the offer. Mom and all of us kids headed west every two or three days with the milk pails and 2-liter Karo syrup tin pails to pick berries. Mom tramped down pathways into the thickest patches and we all picked Karo pails of blackberries and emptied them into the 12-liter milk pails. It was highly disagreeable work, with thorns, as pestering insects, and also the chance of snakes including the poisonous Copperheads. The worst insect was a black Drosophila which wanted the moisture from our ours. There were also stinging sweat bees and a non-stinging fly. After 3-hours or so, we had 5 to 8 gallons of berries and could head home and remove the sweaty heavy clothing and shoes intended to protect us from the thorns.

Today wild blackberries now seldom yield as well as in those days, because those fields had been newly abandoned and light pasturing by cattle and sheep was helpful. Also it seems we have more problems recently with anthracnose which causes the fruiting canes to crack open and dryout about the time the fruit ripens. In those days, I cultivated Early Harvest a slightly above average wild selection given to me by Sarah Everdon, a good gardener on the farm south of us. Eldorado was a better selection from the wild, but I did not know about it. Then Audy Herron, east of our farm, planted an improved variety, which we still grow and which outyields all the modern cultivars and is as sweet as Navaho, but only 1/3 the size of the largest thornless selections. I am still testing blackberry cultivars and hybridizing to develop new cultivars. I planted my first wild selections in my garden in 1944 at the age of 12. Thus my efforts to grow better blackberries spans 53 years and may make me the world's longest-term living blackberry breeder, but I took time out for college, army and graduate school. More information on blackberry breeding will be linked here soon.

Apples and apple butter in open kettle

Making catsup in open kettle

Making soap in open kettle from waste grease.

Exploding cans of peas--real danger. Until we got a pressure canner.

Canning meat.

Making maple syrup

Making sorghum molassses

Making sauerkraut

Jellies, jams.

canning vegetables; corn, beans, greens.

How we stored the cans.

Suggestions, corrections, and comments are appreciated: Contact Harold Eddleman indbio@disknet.com