Cuttin Kraut By Candle Light.

We just got home from Needlefinger's mom place where we harvested 11 heads of cabbage grown and picked fresh from the garden to make homemade kraut. I have eatten kraut for many years and always thought it came in cans and that was that. My parents and grandparents canned vegetables from the garden every summer. There was many a times during a visit with my grandparents we would spend most of the time in the yard snapping beans or grinding tomatoes, onions and peppers for relish. Even though I was exposed to canning vegetables at a young age the thought of homemade kraut never entered my mind. That is until I meet Needles. Her and her family has been making homemade kraut for years. I had often heard of them talking about it but had never been there during the production. Today was the day to remedy that. Needle's mom hauled the 8 gallon stone crock out of storage and the act of cleaning all the implements needed for this task was underway. One thing that really made it feel like it was back in the good ole days was the fact that about an hour before the power had went out and had not come back on yet. The teperature in the house was starting to climb and because this is a farm and they have a well we had to pump the water by hand to clean and wash the cabbage. After removing the hearts of the cabbage we then began to chop up the heads in nice kraut sized slivers and mixed each head with a tablespoon of salt before ending up in the crock. We repeated this for all 11 heads and then placed a clean plate face down on the compacted cabbage and perched a gallon jug full of water on top for weight. Then salt water was added mixed at 1 tablespoon per gallon until there was 2 to 3 inches of water over the plate. After that a cotton towel was draped over the top of the crock and secured with a string. Hopefully in 6 weeks we will have homemade kraut. All in all with 4 of us working it took a little over a hour from start to finish. Not bad as I was suspecting an all day production. I guess I had better wrap this post up we have storms coming from the west and the thunder is getting louder.