Gardeners in the family

My father-in-law was a gardener. In those days, people like him were referred to as farmers.

He grew his family’s food stuff and his wife ‘put up’ the fruits and vegetables of their labor for use all year. She wrangled their five little children, baked bread, tended the chickens and churned milk from their cow into butter to trade for Copenhagen, (chewing tobacco, snuff, chaw) for her husband.

When their children were old enough to go to school they sold the farm and moved to town.

They brought the cow and the chickens with them. My mother-in-law made butter until the neighbors complained abou...