WELCOME TO
BENTON COUNTY, WASHINGTON
in the heart of the Columbia Basin

page 6, Tri-City Herald, August 28, 1960

By BURTON 0. LUM
Tri-City Pioneer


Early-Day Growing Season Short

Because the soil of the garden tracts were subirrigated lands in early Tri-City days, the
 planting and cultivating of the garden was done after
 the high waters had receeded.  This left but a ninety-day frost-free growing season.  
Therefore, the vegetables and produce planted were of a 
quick growing variety, such as King Phillip flint corn, early Ohio and early Rose
 potatoes, bush peas, bush beans, leaf lettuce, early devers 
onions, beets, radishes, oxheart carrots, rutabagas, turnips, and parsnips, George
 Rattlesnake and Dixie Queen watermelons, marblehead and 
hubbard squash, pumpkins and muskmelons.  Cabbages were grown for 
sourkraut and also to cook.  Tomatoes were hard to grow and blighted 
badly.  There were no greenhouses in those Early Days where a flat of tomato 
plants could be purchased.  Corn was cut from the cob and dried 
on cloths of house lining spread on the porch roof.  Pumpkin and squash were 
peeled, cut and dried in like manner.  The edible wild berries 
growing in this area were currants- red, yellow and black.  These were dried, also 
jellied and poured into large crockery jars, the tops of which 
were sealed with beeswax.  Every Early Day ranch had its own smoke house where
 it cured its hams and bacon by smoking it with wild sumac 
wood.  The Early Day Settler enjoyed the flavor and keeping qualities of the 
sumac-smoked hams and bacon.  The Early Day Settler always 
trolled for salmon in the Columbia River at the mouth of the Yakima River during the 
latter part of September.  The salmon were caught, dressed 
and boned. The bellies were salted down in ten gallon casks - a layer of salt then 
a layer of salmon until each cask was full-- then it was headed 
and stored in the cellar until winter.  Then a cask was unheaded and the housewife 
would freshen the salmon bellies by soaking them overnight 
in a large dishpan of cold water and then baked and served with egg sauce (Oh boy! Was it good!)
Old-fashioned cottage cheese was made by taking clabored rich cream and milk and 
placing it in a clean flour sack and hanging it on the clothes 
line to drain and curd.  The Early Day Settlers could not drop over to a Super
 Market and pick up several kinds of bread all sliced and 
packaged.  They had to make their own bread with whatever material they had on 
hand.  So, buttermilk biscuits, baking powder biscuits, 
sourdough bread and corn bread were liked by Early Day Settlers from the South.  
The New England and Northern Early Day Settler 
supplemented these with raised white loaf bread.  Cook stoves were then available.
  Because of the scarcity of fuel, fireplace cooking and 
heating was abandoned and cook stoves and big bellied heating stoves were used 
instead.  The fuel was driftwood and sagebrush.  The 
upland game birds were sagehens and prairie chickens.  The sagehens resembled 
somewhat the wild turkeys, but their meat was strong and dry 
even if soaked overnight in soda water.  The prairie chickens were delicious either 
fried or stewed.  There were wild rabbits, jack and
 cottontails.  The jack was the larger and very poor eating.  The cottontail was 
smaller and very toothsome when prepared by the early day 
housewife.  They could prepare and fry it until it tasted just like chicken.  The wild 
waterfowl were geese, snipe and wild ducks of several kinds, 
such as Mallard, Teal, and Widgeon-- all of which, when properly prepared and 
cooked, were very palatable.  Eggs, milk, cream and butter were 
always plentiful so the early day housewife served many puddings and custards.  
All flour milled in these early days was untreated by 
preservatives as they are today.  The weavel was a pest, so the early day settlers 
were obliged to secure their flour in quantities of not over 
eight, 48-pound cotton sacked flour at one time.  This was ordered from Wadams & Company
 at Portland, and shipped by railroad to Pasco.  
This flour was stored in the driest and coolest place that could be found and was 
taken from there one sack at a time to the kitchen container.  
A roothouse generally supplemented the cellar for food storage.  Potatoes, pumpkins, 
squash, rutabagas, carrots, and cabbage were transferred 
from the roothouse to cellar in small quantities for immediate consumption. 
 When cold weather came a fat yearling steer was butchered and its 
carcus, wrapped in a tarpaulin, would be raised and lowered by block and tackle to 
and from the top of a twenty five foot large pole where it 
was safe from wild animals.  The early day settler saved all the tallow and rendered it 
to make tallow candles.  It was during cold weather also 
that “Hog -Killen Time” came when the porkers were killed, scalded, and scraped,
 the heads cut off and made into head cheese and the tongue
 pickled.  The intestines were prepared for sausage casings.  The remaining carcus 
was quartered and the feet prepared for pickling.  The hams 
and shoulders, bacon and bacon backs were prepared for smoking and then smoked
 in the smokehouse with wild sumac wood.  All pork fat 
from trimming and intestines was rendered for lard.

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