What the Moon Said by Gayle Rosengren
Author:Gayle Rosengren
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-02-19T22:00:00+00:00
9 Harvest Time
AUGUST MARKED THE BEGINNING OF THE harvest. There was no time to write long grumbly letters. There was no time for picnics. There was little time even to play with Mickey and Margaret.
Suppers were late so they could all work longer. Pa usually fell asleep in his rocker reading the day-old copy of the Wisconsin State Journal he got for free at the dairy. Walter sometimes fell asleep right at the table. And Esther and Violet were yawning long before they finished washing the dishes. Ma, her knitting needles clicking, was always the last one to bed. She was making mittens and scarves and wool stockings. Just looking at them made Esther feel hotter than ever. Winter seemed very far away.
Esther and Violet spent much of each day working in Ma’s vegetable garden. The crops in the fields had suffered from the lack of rain. But thanks to the well, the garden had thrived.
All summer Ma had carried heavy buckets of water from the well to soak the dry ground. Now tomatoes, cabbages, beets, carrots, onions, cucumbers, beans, and green peppers were all ripening at once. Every day the girls picked the ripest ones and carried them indoors. Ma boiled them in big pots of water and stored them in glass jars. She pickled the cucumbers and some of the beets and onions and stored those in glass jars, too. It was hot, hot work, but it meant they would have vegetables even in the winter.
When the vegetable garden began to slow down, the grapes in the arbor were ripe. And the plum trees were heavy with fruit. The girls picked fruit until their arms ached. Ma filled jar after jar with jams and jellies. And one day, for a treat, she made fry cakes.
Esther loved fry cakes. It was fun to watch Ma drop big spoonfuls of the dough into bubbling hot oil and to watch the dough puff up into airy cakes. When they were golden brown, Ma rolled them in sugar. Just before they were to be eaten, she sliced them and filled them with jelly. Yum! Esther ate so many, Ma said she’d be sick, and she was a little. But it was worth it.
Meanwhile, the threshers Pa hired came to harvest the oats and the wheat with their big machine. Pa was disappointed. There were not nearly so many bushels as he’d hoped. It had been too dry. His hopes were all pinned on the corn and potato crops now. Nothing must go wrong with them.
School started again right after Labor Day. Now Esther could see Bethany every day without looking over her shoulder, watching for Ma. But happy as Esther was to be back in school again, and to have so much more time with Bethany, her guilt at deceiving Ma was always with her. Like her own little cloud, it cast a small shadow over even her brightest days.
Sometimes Esther would be playing with Bethany and she’d suddenly imagine Ma had come up behind her.
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