Homemade Sauerkraut
When I was 10 we moved from Davenport, Iowa to a farm in Southern Missouri. Our parents had always wanted to raise us kids on a farm to give us better experiences than we were getting living in the city. We had to learn everything from scratch as neither mom nor dad had ever lived on a farm. They told us it would be a grand adventure. Their friends who had convinced them to move to the country said they would help them learn what they needed to. A lot of what we learned was from trial and error. We knew how to garden and most of the basics of food processing mom had learned from her mom and Grandma O’Dell. Mom had an old ball canning jar book that had recipes in it that we used a lot.
One year we had a bumper crop of cabbage, so mom decided to make sauerkraut. She had the recipe from the ball jar book, so we got started. We cleaned and chopped cabbage until I knew we would have cabbage nightmares. We hauled everything down to the cellar where it was cool and mom kept the big crock containers. We loaded the mixture into the crocks to ferment, put big plates on top and big rocks on top of the plates. After the allotted time had passed we were supposed to transfer the kraut into jars that could be stored on the shelves for later use.
We worked all day processing the jars of kraut and lining them up on the shelves. Mom was so proud of all our hard work. After we were finished and everything was cleaned up; she had dad come down to the cellar to look at the many jars of kraut setting on the shelves. He complimented us on our hard work and said he looked forward to a big ham and kraut dinner this winter.
During the night we started hearing weird noises that sounded like the moaning of a hurt animal. Dad said he would investigate and started outside with his rife in his hand. He didn’t find anything out front but when he went out on the back porch the moaning turned into explosions coming from the cellar. He cracked the door to see what had happened and got splattered with kraut. The jars of kraut were exploding off the shelves, getting under fermented cabbage all over the cellar.
Mom hadn’t let the kraut ferment long enough in the crocks so when the cabbage was confined to the small glass jars it became like a projectile bomb. Dad slammed the door shut and started laughing so hard he had to set down on the steps going into the cellar. As he wiped the tears from his eyes and the kraut from his shirt, he told mom, that they could have used her in the war, her kraut would have sent the Japanese running for home.
She didn’t think it was funny; we spent the next couple of days cleaning up all the broken glass and kraut that was all over the cellar. Dad said not to go down there until we hadn’t heard any more bombs detonating for at least a few hours. And to wear hard-soled shoes so as not to cut our feet on broken glass. Mom’s friend came over and told her she didn’t leave enough space in the top of the jars for the fermenting to finish.
Mom learned a valuable lesson in making kraut, we learned that it doesn’t help to get upset when things don’t go the way you expect them to, and if you don’t first succeed just try again. Mom finally got the process right and we had our great ham and kraut dinner on a cold winter night. We laughed about that learning experience for many years to come.
Life can throw us for a loop sometimes but we should never give up. Don’t cry over spilt milk just pick up and carry on, as Grandpa used to used to say. Life was hard at times on our Ozarks farm but I sure do miss it.
If this story reminded you of a time you had to overcome a setback. Leave me a comment; I would like to hear about it.
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