Recollections of quilting and cooking down on the farm

Ginny Helphinstine Reeves with some of her many heirloom feed sack quilts.

Ginny Helphinstine Reeves grew up on a farm in Fleming County.

Her recollections of rural life bring back fond memories of her mother and her grandmothers cooking and sewing and how her family made “many a garment” with feed sack cloth.

“In grade school about all I wore were feed sack dresses. Mother would save the material and send it to aunt Tootsie in Harlan, Ky., she was an excellent seamstress, still is,” Ginny said. “If she had your measurements she didn’t need to see you, so even though she had a large family of her own she would make all these feed sack dresses for my sister Fran and I and send them to us by the time school started. So, my sister and I had all these feed sack dresses for school. Everything was ironed back then. Even our dish towels were made from feed sacks. That’s the way it was for everyone in our community, we made do with what we had. I have dried many, many dishes with those feed sack towels.”

Collecting and trading different patterns of feed sack material was a favorite pastime for farm wives.

“Sometimes daddy would go to the store without mother, and when he did she would bring out a piece of material for him to find a piece to match, if they didn’t have it you would find someone to trade with,” Ginny said.

When Ginny was in the fourth grade she made her first apron.

“My first sewing project for 4-H was an apron made from a feed sack,” Ginny said. “I worked on it for a long time to get the stitches real small. Christine Hurst and Mamie Morrison were 4-H leaders back then and came to the lunch room at Goddard School and helped us cut our patterns out. Miss Mamie would say ‘now Ginny you gotta make smaller stitches.’

It seemed like I worked on that apron forever, trying to get the stitches as small as possible. I still have that apron,” Ginny recalled.

The ability to put a good meal on the table was something every farm wife took seriously.

For Ginny and her mother, Dixie Marie Blaire Helphinstine, stirring up a good recipe was something they each learned at an early age.

“Mother loved to cook, and she especially loved preparing meals for the holidays,” Ginny said. “But mother always made sure that my sister Fran and I knew the true meaning of Christmas, that it was the season of our dear Savior’s birth and she always made sure we understood it was better to give than to receive. Her favorite activity during the holidays was to decide what she could do for others. She baked cakes for many friends and neighbors as long as she was able. She made sure that anyone she knew that may not have food would have a plate at our house. Daddy spent Christmas morning delivering Christmas plates of cookies, cakes, candy or other goodies. Mother spent many hours deciding if she would try a new recipe or fix something using one of her many recipes handed down through the family.”

Although Ginny’s mother tried some of the latest recipes, most of her meals were made from scratch.

Below are a couple of Ginny’s favorite recipes that have served her family well down through the years.

Banana Pudding

2 Tbsp. Flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp. Margarine

Dash salt

2 cups milk

3 egg yolks

1 tsp. vanilla

Heat sugar and milk to boiling. Beat egg yolks, flour and a little water to a thin paste. Add sugar and milk. Cook until thick. Take off stove and add margarine and vanilla.

Arrange in baking dish a layer of vanilla wafers, a layer of the cooked custard, and a layer of bananas.

Repeat layers until dish is full. Make a meringue of 3 egg whites 3 tablespoons of sugar; spread on top, brown lightly.

Ma Blair’s Fried Apple Pies

3 cups flour

3/4 tsp. soda

3/4 tsp. salt

3/4 cup Crisco

1-1/3 cup sour milk

Make into dough, roll thin; cut into circles using small saucer. Put a tablespoon of cooked apples or apple butter on each circle, fold over. Press edges together with a fork. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown or bake in the oven by putting sugar in water and brush over the top of each pie, bake until light brown.