Well, I tell you what, we growed everything that we ate. I mean, we growed, and we canned. My mama canned everything, from apples and made applesauce, and we had a basement, and we had apple trees, and we raised pumpkins. We raised corn. And what we’d do, we’d- and apples- we’d put them in that basement under the house, and it was just rocks. And we had overhaul material around the door of that basement in there, and we put our potatoes in there. We put the pumpkins and everything in there and we store them, and when here’d come a big snow and we’d all kind of need something to eat, he’d say, “I’m going down there and get us some apples, and he’d take a half a bushel, and he’d get apples and potatoes because he had to take all that stuff out from around that door to keep it from freezing. It wasn’t no insulation. It was just a, it was just a blessing. We didn’t go to the store. My daddy had a mill right here at the day before my time. They’d take their corn in a sack that they raised, and they had a cornmill. And my dad, if I’m not mistaken, ended up with the cornmill that was in that store, and you’d put you’d shell that corn out of a crib, shell it, and take it put it on a mule, I guess, and take it down there. That was before my time, but and they’d grind it. They wasn’t no money exchange, but they’d take a toll out. They called it a toll, and they had a scoop, and they’d get out, and he’d put it over his- and his box, and put the rest of it and on the mule, and Jerry go back up Hog Branch, and that’s the way we went, yeah. And now that was before my time. See, I, I was raised over on Jack’s Creek, on Charlie Brown Road over next to Burnsville. That’s where I was born, and we that just was a way of life for us. We didn’t go to no grocery store, and we churned. We made our own butter, milked our own cows, saved a she’d save the cream. Then we churned, make our own butter. We made everything. We we were self-sufficient, really. And even when I got big, we, we didn’t go to the grocery store, we’d go down to old store Ben Banksy’s and get some like flour or sugar or something, salt, something like that. We raised everything, and that’s the way we- that’s the way I was raised. We all was.
We growed everything that we ate
Gathering: Egypt Township, North Carolina
Prompt: What was your favorite food growing up?

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