Memories of a rural childhood – A is for Apples and Apricots

memories

Apples

My maternal grandmother Ida Mary Gibson Roberts (nee Ferres) visited us one day a week for many years. One of my most enduring memories is of her sitting at the kitchen table peeling, trimming and cutting up huge piles of windfall apples (even the very tiniest most grub-eaten ones) so they could be stewed for the family to eat with our evening meal.

Apricots

Some hot years Dad drove into the Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market between Christmas and New Year to take advantage of the availability of cheaper fruit at that time. We loved it when he came home with many cases of luscious, ripe apricots. We kids ate lots of them fresh. We also helped with cutting them in half and placing them in the Fowler’s Vacola bottles ready for preserving and cutting them up for jam making.

11 thoughts on “Memories of a rural childhood – A is for Apples and Apricots”

  1. This is a great idea. There are others who are doing childhood memories! I wish I had thought about it as it is a good way to record memories. Next year!

    1. Thanks, Sharon. I am hopeful that my plan of short posts about bits and pieces remembered from growing up will be both do-able and interesting to read.

    2. My list of possible topics is growing, Sharon. For some letters of the alphabet I think I already have enough ideas for several year’s posts!

    1. Realistically, it is the only way I could do it at present – and most of these stories only need a few lines!

  2. Apples are yummy, aren’t they. You can do so many things with them. I wasn’t a cooking apples fan, until I learnt how to make apple crumble … yum, yum. #AtoZChallenge

    1. We had apples in many forms: grated in fruit salad, stewed with ice cream, baked, and with a sponge topping.

  3. I have read backwards through your A to Z posts. What a pleasure they are to read…so many great memories of growing up. I think you may have started a trend for next year 😉

    My mother did lots of cooking but never bottled any preserves that I recall.

    @cassmob from
    Family History Across The Seas

    1. Thanks, Pauline. Not sure about a trend. It was really the easy way out – a combination of Genealogy Do-over and A to Z!
      I couldn’t see the point of completing an A-Z of genealogy resources or places as many other people have already compiled extensive resources of that kind. Neither could I envisage finding a suitable range of ancestral names or occupations!

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