Waiting on Dandelions

I remember when I was a kid that one of the biggest events of late winter was searching for the first dandelion.  Granny always told us that they were a promise of spring and once one was found, it wouldn’t be too much longer before warm weather would return to the mountain. 

I’m sure the search was originally initiated to get the kids from underfoot during the dead of winter, and to give us a purpose.  After the anticipation of Christmastime had worn off, but before the egg hiding of Eastertime, there is a long stretch of cold, hum-drum, and did I mention cold weather.  Nothing to do but chores and hunkering down and waiting for better.  For us kids, that meant go to school, come home and carry in the night’s wood, feed the stock, have supper, do homework, and get ready for bed.  Day after day.  After day. 

The Mouth of Burns Holler.  This is where the first dandelions would always appear.  Granny's old house is visit on the right, the old stone cow barn, long since lost in a flood, stood on the left side of the road.

Then sometime in late February, Granny would holler at us kids as we were walking up the holler road from school and tell us it was getting to be about time for the dandelions to come up.  She always picked an unseasonably warm day to tell us this (which I might add were uncommon in those days).  Now she knew it was still too early for dandelions on the mountain, but she also knew it would give us a sense of purpose just when we needed it most.  Once the word was given, the hunt was on.  We would run to the house and throw down our books and bags, and head out the door.  The chores would have to wait.  In hindsight, granddad and Uncle Wood usually did the chores on the first day of the search.  It was almost as if there was a vast conspiracy to get us kids out of the house.  We knew the first blooms would appear on the hillside between Granny’s house and the old stone cow barn, and she would watch us search in vain for the first bloom.  She’d come out on the porch and talk to us as we searched, “now when you all find a good mess of the greens, I’ll cook us all up a good meal.  Good for the blood, they are.”

Day after day, after school, we would look for it.  On Saturday mornings we would look for it. On Sunday afternoons we would look for it.  We paid attention to the other signs of spring that would give us a clue as to when and where it might be.  I devised a method that when the hog pen started smelling pretty ripe,  it was a sign that dandelions were up.  Somewhere, anyway.   My methodology never really panned out but I swore that it would someday. 

Springtime on the Mountain.  Clothesline, dogwoods, lilacs and a chickenhouse.  We all think of different things when we think of springtime.  This says it to me.

Then one day when we least expected it, there it would be.  The first bloom.  It would be small, gnarled, half-frozen and unopened, but it was the first.  Whoever found it would let out a whoop and everyone would come running.  Sure enough, there it was.  The finder would pick it and we’d all take off for Granny’s house.  Of course, she’d hear us coming long before she could see us, and she would have us some treat made up.  Like molasses candy, or tater candy or something of the like.  It was almost as if Granny knew what day we’d find the first dandelion.  Looking back, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Granny used to look for the first bloom while all of us kids were away at school.  Granny always did love her dandelions.

A good place to find dandelions.  At the right time of year, you can pick a mess in just a few minutes.

Grandmaw's Dandelion Gravy recipe. You put it over dandelion greens. Put about 1 1/2 cups milk in skillet with 1 tsp butter or bacon grease (bacon grease preferred). Then make thickening in another bowl by combining: 2 Tbsp. flour, 1 egg, about 1/4-1/2 cup milk, stir until smooth. Add about 1 Tbsp. vinegar. Add to the milk in skillet. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook until it thickens. If not sour enough add little more vinegar to your taste.

Spring Came Last Night

A native of Lewis County, West Virginia, author Grace Yoke White wrote the book, "Unhoarded Gold: A Book of Poems" in 1953 . I am proud to include one of these poems, titled "Spring Came Last Night" in this post.

Spring Came Last Night

The sky is clear,

Spring birds are near;

I hear their calls

On low stone walls.

The winter left with lagging feet;

With summer warmth our pulses beat;

The snow is gone, the sun is bright,

The flowers are here-spring came last night.

The sky is blue;

All hearts are true.

Sorrow slipt away;

Joy's here today.

Springtime with Grandmaw

Twenty years have passed since my Grandmaw Mary walked these hills. It is hard for me to believe it has been that long. It seems to me that I was always at Grandmaw’s side, walking our land and learning her ways. I remember about those days about this time every year. We’d walk across the holler and up the adjacent hill to her garden. She’d scoop down and grab a handful of dark earth, and she squeeze it. If it formed a ball, she’d tell me “Nope, still too wet to plant.” She’d explain that the soil should crumble in her hand it if was ready. Grandmaw would tell me, “If you plant when the ground is wet, your dirt will be as hard as the hubs of Hell.” All of these years later, I still haven’t been able to figure out where that saying came from. Does Hell have hubs? They must be hard if it does.

After checking out the garden, I remember we’d always proceed to stroll through her plum orchard. She loved her Green Gage Plums. I don’t know why but one year I noticed that there was something on the tree bark, and to me in my world, it looked exactly like chickenshit. I asked Grandmaw Mary why her plum trees had chickenshit all over them, and she laughed at me and looked at bark and told me it was black knot. She said to remind her to get some lime sulfur to put on them, she said that is the only thing that can get rid of black knot. Shortly after this time, Grandmaw started getting sick and nobody thought to apply the lime sulfur, so the trees languished a few more years but eventually died. I have wished many times over the years that I had put the lime sulfur on her Green Gage plum trees, but I was just a kid at the time.

Grandmaw Mary was a firm believer in planting by the signs. She always said to plant corn in the sign of the Crab. And you had to plant potatoes in either the sign of the Thighs or the sign of the Feet, but always in the dark of the moon. In addition, Grandmaw always liked to plant potatoes on Good Friday. I remember some of the old signs and what to plant in them, but not as many as I would like to have remembered. Grandmaw always had a good garden.



Maw & Big Six at Maw's garden.

I also remember every year at school we’d buy Grandmaw flowers. She loved purple petunia’s. At school, the high school vo-ag ran a greenhouse. All of the elementary students would get the opportunity to go every day and buy single flowers for 25 cents each or $2.00 a dozen (our school was kindergarten through 12th grade). It was always a big deal for us to save our snack money and go buy Grandmaw Mary some petunia’s. She’s keep them on her back porch and they’d get really big. Everytime you’d visit Grandmaw Mary, she’d take you out and show you the flowers that you bought her. She had several grandkids but she always remembered which kid had bought which flowers.

And of course, Grandmaw Mary loved her lilacs. I wrote an entire story about Grandmaw’s love for lilacs. Read it by clicking here.



Grandmaw Mary's Lilac Bush.


Grandmaw knew what plants or home remedies to use for common ailments. She taught me that milkweed would heal most skin conditions, including warts. She taught me that chewing a willow twig would cure a headache. She taught me that chewing birch cured an upset stomach. She taught me that tobacco spit would take the pain out of a bee sting. She taught me how to remove the heat from a burn, or to stop bleeding just by saying a certain Bible verse over it. She called it “takin’ the far out” or “stoppin’ up blood”. Nowadays people would call that faith healing. I don’t know if you all believe in that, but I sure do. I have complete faith in anything that Grandmaw Mary taught me.

Grandmaw Mary in her kitchen.

So you can see why this time of year reminds me of Grandmaw, planting the soil and all that she has taught me. I’ve always found it humorous that even though Grandmaw Mary taught me all of these things, that one time she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Well, without even having to think about it, I told her “I want to be a farmer.” Grandmaw Mary just looked at me and shook her head, and said, “Honey, you might as well find something else that you want to be. Only a rich man can be a farmer these days. My daddy was a farmer and he was a poor man all of his life. A poor boy like you ain’t got a chance at farming these days.” (read about Grandmaw’s Mary’s parents by clicking here). All of these years later, I see the wisdom in Grandmaw’s advice even though I’ve always wanted to be, and continue to want to be, a farmer when I grow up!!

Obligatory scenery shot. Pendleton County barn in Spring.


But for now, I get by on getting’ by, living on just the “concept” of being a farmer. I suppose you could say I am a farmer without a farm. But there is one thing that I have come to realize, though Grandmaw Mary has been gone for the past twenty years, she continues to walk this land with me everytime I step outside.

Generations of Spring

My world abounds with life anew.
An anxiously awaited spring welcomes
A new beginning.

And the fat robins strut about with their red breasts shining,
They remind me of home and childhood,
“Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree…”

The cool earth has changed its scent,
The now pungent aroma permeates my senses,
And it beckons me to scoop it up to partake of the gifts.

The warm light shines upon my shoulders
Lifting my spirits. My mind turns to retrospection,
And to the generations that walked this land before me.

The present becomes the past
And the future becomes the present.
Promises are made, promises are kept.

Life continues. The Earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

A Sticky Situation

It’s about that time of year again, time to make maple syrup. Have any of you readers out there tried making maple syrup before? I have. I guess I always was sort of a food purist, perhaps it is more like I’ve always been curious to see whether I could follow some of the old-timey traditional methods of making stuff at home, so it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at making maple syrup. I remember I was about 15 years old or so, and I had talked to a few of the older folks in the neighborhood about making syrup and they told me how it was done, though I didn’t let on that I was actually going to try my hand at it for fear of getting to much advice that would take the fun out of it.

I remember that I needed a spout to insert into the tree to drain the sugar water out, and I didn’t want to use metal or plastic pipe for a spout (which undoubtedly would have been the most convenient). No way, I was doing this the old fashioned way and I wanted a wooden spout. I hunted the woods for hours looking for a straight stick about an inch wide, then using my pocket knife I split it open. I cleaned out the doty center of the stick and I had two little troughs with which to siphon away the sugar water from the tree. I did try my hand at hollowing out a whole stick but it was just too time consuming, so my idea worked well enough.

I then took Dad’s wood bore and after scouting out the biggest sugar maple trees behind our house on the hillside, I took boring holes into the trees. I then inserted my little wooden “pipe troughs” into the holes, and had then dripping down into my catchment containers. After waiting a few minutes, I saw the first few droplets of sugar water trying to run down into my waiting mason jar. (Yes, mason jar…this was a small time operation!). I soon learned through trial and error that if I slanted my bored hole slightly upward, the sap flowed out a little better. Also, I found that a little spot of chewing gum dammed up the excess sugar water and made the sap flow out my troughs a little better, as well as securing my troughs in the hole. I know I must have drilled 20 or so trees, and I had jars, cans, cups, buckets and pretty much anything else that would catch sugar water placed under nearly every maple tree on the hillside. This was about mid-morning, and as the day progressed and it got a little warmer, the sap started running faster. Some of them ran like a slow running faucet. Since my catchment containers were rather small, I nearly ran myself to death emptying them into my larger 5 gallon bucket which sat at the bottom of the hill. Eventually, I focused on the larger and more productive trees and abandoned operations at the small trees. After a few hours, my 5 gallon bucket was full of sweet tasting maple sap. It looked like water, had the consistency of water, but it had a slightly sweet taste. After getting what I believed would be aplenty maple sugar water, I gathered up my jars, cans, cups, etc. and placed a piece of clay mud into the bored holes of the tree to keep out moisture so as to prevent rot.

An old drawing of a maple sugar camp.

So with my 5-gallon bucket of maple sugar water in hand, I talked Mom into allowing me the use of her kitchen to boil down my syrup. She told me I could but that if I made a mess, I’d have to clean it up. So, using her big stockpot, I filled it about ¾ full with sugar water and started heating it. Soon it was at a boil, and I kept adding more sugar water to the pot as it evaporated away. It took several hours of this, but eventually the boiling liquid started turning the lightest shade of brown, and I just knew that soon I’d have syrup. I couldn’t help but sample my work frequently and it was starting to get slightly sweeter, but still nowhere near syrup. So my pot kept boiling and boiling, and it was clear that I’d get no more than a quart of syrup out of this, but that was still fine. Well, about the time my pot had about a quart of liquid in it, I tasted it again…nope, still very watery…so I had no choice but to keep boiling. Everyone had told me that it took a lot of sugar water to make syrup but I figured I had enough. I had thought about going back out to the trees to get more sap, but Mom told me that I’d better wait and see if my experiment worked before I went and made more work for myself. I’m sure it was more like she wanted me out of the kitchen since I’d been there for hours and hours. So I acquiesced and kept on a-boilin’!

It soon became apparent that I wasn’t going to have much maple syrup at all when I got it boiled down. As it was now, I had less than a cup full in the pot and it was still rather watery. I became resolved right then to continue and get whatever syrup I could out of this…no matter how little… since I had spent all day at it. When the liquid had nearly all boiled away, I tasted my treasured substance, and lo and behold, it was just right! I had made maple syrup! However, when I measured it out, I had just over 3 Tablespoons of it (out of 5 gallon of maple sugar water). Everyone got a good laugh over that, but let me tell you, that was good maple syrup. I shared it with everyone there, and we all got a taste, and everyone agreed that it was really good.

And that's when the real fun started. Mom came out to the kitchen and told me to clean up my mess. I’d been really careful not to make too much of one since I knew I’d be the one to have to clean it. I washed the stockpot, and wiped off the stove and table, took my bucket outside, and thought I had it all done, then Mom discovered something. She looked around and had noticed that there was a sticky film all over the walls and ceiling, over the cabinets and refrigerator, over the countertops and the ceiling fan, even on the window panes! It seems that while my maple sugar water was evaporating, the steam had miniscule amounts of sugar in it, and it had coated everything in the kitchen. Hot, soapy water was the only thing that would cut the stickiness, and Mom said we had to clean the whole kitchen (yes, she helped!). She really didn’t say too much to me, probably because if she started she wouldn’t have been able to stop! It was way up into the night before we got the remnants of my first and only ill-fated attempt at making my own maple syrup. So for the love of God and all that is Holy, if you decide to make your own homemade maple syrup, take my advice and do it someplace other than your mother’s kitchen. I old guess the old timers had a reason for making sugar camps after all!

Grandmaw's Water Bucket

The below poem triggers memories of my Grandmaw Mary. It conjures up visions of the old spring that rested upon the hillside above her house. It was always a great honor to be asked my Grandmaw to fetch her a bucket of water. I know I always took great care to dip the bucket way down into the cool, clear spring to get the freshest and coolest water. I remember there'd always be a chance that you'd pick up a salamander in the spring so you'd have take special care to avoid that. With the greatest of care, I'd heft the full water bucket to my side and inch my way down the hill on the old footpath, worn smooth by the generations of feet who made this very same trek. In the springtime, I'd usually stop and smell the apple blossoms on the Yellow Delicious apple tree that grew by the footpath.

Grandmaw would always meet me at the back porch and take the water bucket from me. I know now that she most likely done this to keep me from slopping water on her kitchen floor, after all, how steady could I have been, I was only a little boy carrying a 2-gallon bucket full of water. After taking the bucket from me, she would heap praise upon me and give me a cookie or a piece of pie that she always managed to make appear as if out of thin air. She'd then sit the water bucket up on the water stand beneath her cabinet near the back door.

Grandmaw Mary in her kitchen.

She usually had two buckets and kept one full of fresh water, and used the other bucket of "dead" water to heat for washing dishes. Grandmaw said that once water set overnight, it became dead and people shouldn't drink it. I do know that fresh water tasted better. Grandmaw always kept cheesecloth over her water buckets to keep flying insects out of it, and she had a little metal dipper that you could dip down into the bucket and get out a drink. Nobody ever thought anything of it then, but nowadays people would think this unsanitary. You'd drink right out of the dipper, and toss the rest out the back door. You were never allowed to put the water you didn't drink back in the bucket, but you could dip a second dipper if you were still thirsty.

I remember a little shelf behind the water buckets. Grandmaw had two little teacups there, no doubt gifts from some of her children on one of their travels. Grandmaw typically didn't go anywhere, her extent of travel was limited to Franklin and the Bartow Flea Market. I was always fascinated by those teacups, one said "Paw, Come git yer coffee" and the other said "Maw, Come git yer coffee". On the Paw cup, it showed a hillbilly man sleeping outside on the door stoop, and on the Maw cup there was a mountain woman plowing a field and the man was standing in the door way hollering out at her in the field. I found a "Maw" cup in an antique shop right before Christmas and bought one for my mother. I need to get her a Paw cup now. They have them on Ebay, where I found the below picture.

It's amazing how a poem can trigger all of these precious memories of Grandmaw Mary, one memory triggers another, and so on. I could sit and talk about my Grandmaw Mary all day long.
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The Old Oaken Bucket

by Samuel Wordsworth

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollections present them to view !
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hung in the well.

That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when return'd from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing !
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips !
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hangs in the well.