The Rural Voice, 1988-08, Page 51NOTEBOOK
boxes," she told Audrey. "The jars are
kind of dusty as they've been down in
the basement for a while."
So it was that we three ladies,
Audrey's two kids, and half a dozen
boxes piled into the car and headed for
the neighbours. She asked us if we
had time for coffee. I found that sort
of a perplexing question, for on a
farm, how would you ever know? We
just smiled and said sure. It was over
coffee that we were introduced to
beets.
"Are you sure," we asked, "that
you want to give away your beets?"
"Oh yes," the neighbour, Karla,
replied. "I'm just feeding them to the
pigs now anyway."
"Heaven forbid we should take
food out of the mouth of a pig!" we
expostulated.
Karla laughed. "Oh, they just eat
the tops anyway. Take as many as
you want. And then take more. If you
want to leave the tons in a pile for the
pigs, that would be fine."
We headed for the garden where
we pulled beets until our faces began
to take on their colouring, but we
hardly made a dent in Karla's beet
crop.
Our car full, we raced back to
Audrey's, scrubbed jars, made supper,
then cautiously approached the boxes
in the porch. The cucumbers were
still there! Audrey announced that she
had to go and feed pigs.
The canning fever was slowly
seeping out of me, and I knew I had
to do something quick before it was
gone for good. "Elsie," I said, "if we
ground those big cucumbers we could
make relish and be done faster." I
grabbed a box of grinder parts and
hastily put them together. All went
well until we started grinding. For
some reason the ingredients started
bubbling up and coming out the top.
Elsie asked, "When you put the
grinder together, did you put all the
parts in?"
"How would I know?" I replied
honestly, for machinery and I have
never been compatible.
So we searched and, lo and behold,
found a part that looked like it might
belong to a grinder. I stuck it on.
Elsie proceeded to grind. The ground
cucumbers continued flowing out of
the top. We stared at the miserable
little machine. Elsie looked at me
thoughtfully. "When you put the
grinder together," she queried, "did
you put it together the right way?"
"How would I know?" I replied.
We disassembled the grinder.
Elsie reassembled it and it worked. I
sighed and traipsed back and forth to
the garden, hauling in cabbages and
onions for her to grind and mix with
the cucumbers.
Audrey came back in. "My sow
just had a litter of 12 piglets!" she
announced jubilantly. "How are the
dills coming?"
"Uh, we decided to make relish,"
we told her.
"Did you find a recipe?" she
inquired.
"Oh yes!" we assured her. "How-
ever, there is a slight problem. The
only recipe we could find calls for a
bit of improvisation."
"Why is that?" Audrey asked, then
added, "I thought I had plenty of
cucumbers."
"Oh, you do!" we assured her.
"However, your recipe calls for green
tomatoes, which you don't have, ditto
for red peppers, green peppers, and
cider vinegar."
"What do I have that the recipe
calls for?" Audrey asked.
"Water," we replied, "That's about
it."
"Well, what are you doing then?"
she asked, clearly perplexed.
"Improvising," we assured her.
"We discussed the matter and won-
dered what our ancestors would have
done in a similar situation, and the
answer came clear as a bell, "Use
what's at hand! So we are."
Elsie, feeling a fresh burst of fever,
suddenly exclaimed, "Darn! I wish I
knew where I could get some nice
cucumbers like these!"
"Oh, I know where you can,"
Audrey said, and placed a call to
another neighbour 19 kilometers
away. "I know it's nearly dark," she
said into the phone, "but would you
mind running out to your garden and
picking 15 pounds of cucumbers for
my sister-in-law?"
Almost involuntarily, my arm
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