Matson Insurance has partnered with Jefferson County History Center to offer exploreJeffersonpa.com readers a look into Jefferson County’s past. Today, “Kitchen Gardens” in Jefferson County are highlighted.
[Pictured above: The kitchen gardens that provided vegetables and herbs for both folks on the farm and in Jefferson County towns were common during much of the 19th and 20th centuries. (JCHS Collection)]
(Article submitted by Carole Briggs, Jefferson County Historical Society.)
KITCHEN GARDENS
My favorite gardening T-shirt is pale green with “Plays in Dirt” spread across the front. It’s nearing its end, but I’m hoping it might last through another month while I tidy up my herb garden. April is the month to see which thymes made it through the winter, to watch for the tiny leaves of lavender to appear, and to discover the garlic planted last October.
Working the soil has been an important part of Jefferson County’s economy for much of its history, and once so were the kitchen gardens that families in town nurtured each spring. Historian McKnight wrote about the “rough box fastened to the second story of the necessary, in which to raise early cabbage plants.” The “necessary” was the outhouse or toilet facility.
Women tended gardens that contained the usual vegetables, as well as the herbs they used for dying, cooking and medicinal purposes―catnip, peppermint, sage, and tansy. It was important for those early arrivals to bring seeds with them, and it became important to save seeds from each year’s crops for the following year. In a climate like western Pennsylvania’s, cold frames and hotbeds helped these families get an early start during the frosty months of April and May.In her 1888 history, Scott described the “big frost” that occurred June 4, 1859, destroying all kinds of vegetables, grain, fruit, and potatoes. Panic followed but the “scare was worse than the hurt.” People replanted and prices came down.
These families grew and stored much of what they would eat during the following winter. Root vegetables like turnips and rutabagas would stay buried in the garden to be dug up as needed, while carrots and potatoes would be dug up and stored in the family’s root cellar. When we moved into our home in 1983, our neighbor, who was in her late seventies, was still planting turnips and digging them up to eat during the cold winter months, just as her forebears had done in the 19th century.
Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.
Throwback Thursday is brought to you by Matson Insurance in Brookville.
Submitted by the Jefferson County History Center.
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