Milkweed

May 24, 2025
Milkweed growing in the hoop house
has a head start on the outdoor ones!
 

We let milkweed grow in select spaces in the hoop house as an attractant for butterflies. But it's edible too. My newspaperman Grandfather, W.D. Fish, refers to himself as Golly in his weekly newspaper column, widely read - even by the Metzgers and Mattesons who lived here before this present generation.

He writes in 1965:

Ever eat milkweed greens? If not you missed something good. At any rate, 'way back about 1885, when this old timer was ten years old, we had some. We'll tell the story and some readers may be interested.

Our family lived about a mile from Whitesville in a small one-story cottage at the mouth of Hazletine Gully. A tiny stream ran down the gully but it was so small it would run out of water in a dry season. There were three other families that lived nearby. One was Calvin Jones. 

Neighbor Jones had fenced in about one acre of land along the stream for pasture for two or three calves. During one summer there were no calves and milkweeds thrived.

Golly's mother – bless her kindly heart, gathered the new and tender ends of the plants. Where a tender stem was broken off a new growth would quickly appear. This meant a consistent supply of greens for weeks or maybe for months. How mother prepared and cooked the milkweed Golly was too young to remember, but they were excellent food

The greens cost nothing. mother made our bread – salt rising of course – eggs were 10 to 12 cents per dozen and butter was 10 to 12 cents a pound.

At the head of the gully was the Hazletine farm. Ed Hazletine had a large orchard with many varieties of apples. He kindly would give all the apples you could use. We believe the man would have been insulted if you had offered to pay for them.

He had a box mounted on the fence bordering the orchard with large letters "Hungry Box." When early apples became ripe, the box was filled. They were free as the air we breathe.

Some folks scoff at the words, "the good old days" but there were some good old days almost 100 years ago. Golly knows!

Golly, so old he lives much with his memories, recalls his mother telling, after he was of adult age, of my awakening her in the dead of night and demanding that she sing "Minnie." It was a real task but dear, kind mother did it. Now we can remember neither tune nor words.

Interested in trying to forage milkweed? Up-to-date information can be found here.  And I'll have to keep looking for "Minnie" but I'll save that for my personal blog. 

Apple Evaporator

As the apple blossoms flutter to the ground in our Pennsylvania orchard, we wonder will there be apples in the fall - will the fruit set, avoid insects and disease, and the ravages of unpredictable weather?

My newspaperman grandfather, plying his trade in Coudersport from the 1920s until his death in 1969, wrote often of his experiences as a youth in nearby Whitesville, N.Y. This remembrance of the apple industry of the late 19th Century deserves to be shared.

W.D. "Golly" Fish writes:

Are there apple evaporators in this year of the 1965! I doubt it. Who would want dried apples in these days? And could anybody be so hungry he would eat dried apple pie?

Every farmer had an apple orchard a half century or so ago but there are few orchards in this area at present. The old trees are gone and young trees have not been planted. It is probable that if small trees were planted now deer would eat and ruin them. If they were in a valley, if the deer did not destroy them the beavers would.

I had a job in the evaporator at Whitesville about 1895. It was built by Merz Brothers of Webster, N.Y. Since it was a boost for the village, volunteer help was solicited. It was sort of understood that those who lent a hand in erecting the building, some 30 x 72 feet, would be favored in employment when apple drying started.

Golly, a youth, anxious for a job, worked ten hours a day, one week, for nothing and boarded at home when he did get the job. He worked nights, keeping the furnaces hot, and three or four times a night he had to go to the second floor and turn the apple slices that they might dry evenly. The pay – memory fails but it was about one dollar per night. A dollar was real money in those days!

A building I imagine to be similar to the
Merz Brothers structure in Whitesville

In his youth, Golly worked at a variety of jobs – farm hand, sawmill worker, made honey boxes, worked in a cheese box factory, shoveled earth in gas line ditch and many other activities – but printing intrigued and fascinated him above all else.

The old apple dry house disappeared years ago and apple orchards are scanty in Whitesville area. They have departed with the blacksmith shops and the sawmills.

Change! Change! Change!

Farming From The Interstate

Whizzing by on the interstate, I can grab only a brief moment, my phone pointed out the window, to capture farming nuance in this vast and troubled country. But the pictures tell a story of struggle and success, even in the same frame. 

... and from Ohio, this tribute to Rutherford B. Hayes, America's 19th President, painted on the side of a barn:

"The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than fears to win in this business."

Hayes served as chief executive at the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the modern industrial age. He was well suited to the task, having earned a steadfast reputation for integrity throughout his career as a soldier and a statesman. Upstanding, moral, and honest, Hayes was ironically elected after one of the most lengthy, bitterly disputed, and corrupt presidential elections in American history.

One can only hope that an upstanding, moral and honest person will rise up to end this bitterly disputed and corrupt period of history we're enduring in 2025.