Whoa! How fun was your early life???
We didn’t have mulberry trees. We had a HUGH vegetable garden, maybe half an acre, but we had a plum grove (about 10 trees in a circle) two bing cherry trees, two peach trees, strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries and lots of melons.
In the neighborhood were apple orchards (Delicious) an apricot tree, blackberries and wild asparagus along the ditch bank. There was a black walnut tree down the street and a lot of horse chestnut trees in the hood as well as blackberries at the neighbor’s.
Your grandmother made pies from the sour cherries because that’s what they are called: Pie cherries. They hold up better during cooking and canning than other cherries do.
We also had rhubarb, but that was in Alaska.
We just happened to live next door to Grandma and Grandpa... Looking back it's easy to see just how much we really did have back then. It's something that my grandchildren will not experience. The subject came up in church yesterday (well, after church) about how we once could hop on our bikes and disappear for the day as long as we were home when the streetlights came on. And even if we were on the other side of town we couldn't get away with anything because everyone knew whose kid you were and if you messed up the phone call to your parents beat you home..
On top of having the orchard stuff, we did have a garden and between grandparents and our gardens we had lots of fresh stuff when in season. Sweet corn that you go out, grab, husk, and throw in the boiling water is way better than whateveritis they call sweet corn at the local supermarket that was removed from the plant who knows when..
One of the blessings of having all that stuff in the garden was that the abundance of the garden would last over winter due to hot water baths, mason jars, zinc lids with a glass insert, and red rubber rings (later supplanted by brass rings and lids that were domed but if the dome disappeared it was a good thing and if it didn't it got used for supper that night..) Mom and Grandma or Mom and her sisters would have a get together and spend the day stuffing things into mason jars and boiling them for ever.. If memory serves, everyone brought their big black-enameled canning pot and if you arranged them just so on the range you could use four at once.. Don't remember how many jars each held - six?
With all the adults fiddling around in the kitchen we got shooed outdoors except for the occasional call to carry a bucket of stems, leaves, pits, skins, whatever didn't get stuffed in the mason jar out to the 'compost pile'..
Come to think of it, even a 'compost pile' was easier back then. You picked a spot and dumped all your food trash there.. Now if I tried that here the town would be busting down the door for 'creating a nuisance' because it would allegedly attract ratsmicevermin. (You must have it enclosed, screened, and properly drained so as not to produce runoff that will befoul the creek..)
They would rather we load up the landfill..
You know, black walnuts make excellent slingshot ammo...