Pumpkin Fest at Elba United Methodist Church tonight

 I made 2 doz. chocolate cupcakes and decorated them with white icing and put 1 candy corn on top to take to the pumpkin fest at church at 4 p.m.

A lot of families came to the pumpkin fest and kids loved the inflatables and riding the farm wagon.

Then they went inside the Fellowship hall where lots of events were taking place, as well as a long table of food.  Some of the men of the church grilled hamburgers outside.




Nell's cousins and neighbors

My latest food preservation project: drying fruit

I have been busy drying apples and persimmons.  A couple of years ago I bought a dehydrator at a thrift shop for $5.  It has 5 trays and a small electric motor underneath.  Fruit dries in about 24 hours. I really like the persimmons best when dried; they are so sweet.

I have made 3 "kitchen swags", using raffia to attach the fruit and
cinnamon sticks.  I gave one to my sister-in-law Carol on her birthday
yesterday.  Made another for her daughter Ginger and one for my
kitchen.  I put a couple of drops of apple/cinnamon essential oil at
the top knot and it smells like "Thanksgiving".  The last time I made one a few years ago, it was still nice when I took it down in the spring.

I used to help my mother and grandmother dry peaches, apples and figs when I was a little girl.  They would use pieces of tin to place the fruit on and then place the tin on top of the hedge in the hot sun.  What I remember most about what they did with the dried fruit was fried apple and peach pies and homemade fig newtons. Next year I want to dry drying some figs.  I wonder if I can dry tomatoes?

I might locate a large sheet of tin and use that next summer.  It will hold much more than my 5 small trays.

My Legacy

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The President's Own - Marine Band

Today we were privileged to hear this great band at the new Enterprise (AL) High School Performing Arts Center (auditorium).  It was our first visit to this new building and it's beautiful - and so big.

What a great performance.  The program had a great variety of music, including 3 of my favorite marches.
The first one, "King Cotton", I played in the Elba High School Band in the early 1950s.  Then there was John Phillip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever".  At end of the program they played the Armed Forces Medley and asked veterans to stand for their service song.  Enterprise being a military retiree town had many people standing for their branch of service. For an encore, the moderator stepped to the microphone and asked everybody to join in and sing "God Bless America ".  We sang it through twice.

The moderator, a mezzo soprano, sang two selections from the opera Carmen.  She was great!  She also had a great personality as she announced each of the selections before the band played them.

James loved band music, especially John Phillip Sousa marches.  I kept thinking about him throughout the concert, and how he would have been trying to direct the band from his seat.

Getting ready for annual Church Charge Conference

Sanctuary completed Feb 10, 1911

Once a year in November,  Elba United Methodist Church has an annual church charge conference.  This year it is scheduled for Nov 13 and our District Supt. will be present and preaching that morning.  The conference will probably be in the afternoon.

Since 2009, I have been serving as Membership Secretary, as well as Church Historian.  As Membership Secretary, I am responsible for maintaining the Church Permanent Register.  Names are entered in the book when they join the church, or when they are baptized as infants.  All of our church records were destroyed in the 1990 flood and another flood in 1998.  The church secretary dried the old church records to put together a new register. The older records were destroyed but some of the names from the last 40 years were preserved and a handwritten register was made.

I asked  the church secretary  to order some software for me to use to put together a new permanent registrar.   Currently there are 261 members.  An audit of the membership two years ago revealed that many had transfered to other churches when they moved away from Elba,  never notifying EUMC of their transfer.  I made a lot of telephone calls to verify members and make changes when necessary.

I have printed a church directory, and various lists from info I have on hand.

As Church Historian, I chaired the 100th anniversary of our beautiful sanctuary in Feb 2011.  It was also Homecoming Day and we had a large attendance.  I had so much fun working on the history of our church and furnishing bulletin inserts for 4 Sundays leading up to the big day, Feb. 11th.  The inserts had info about the church bell and steeple, the stained glass windows, old photos of members, and other items of interest.

Hot Pepper Sauce and Turnip Greens

A late crop of hot peppers came along on two pepper plants that have been producing pepper all summer.  I run out of things to do with hot peppers so I guess I'll use these peppers to make more pepper sauce to give away.  We love hot pepper sauce on veggies.  But one bottle will last you a year!  You just keep adding vinegar to it.

I might make some hot pepper jelly to give away at Christmas.  Jim and I could sit down and eat a half-pint, served over cream cheese, for one meal.  We love it with water wafer crackers.

I picked all of these peppers today and there's still blooms and tiny peppers on the tall plants.

I cut up one of the large peppers and remove seeds before chopping
 it to add to cornbread I am baking. Next year we will just plant one hot pepper and one bell pepper.  That's more than enough for our needs.

I have to remember to wear rubber gloves to chop these 'red hot fellows'.

You must have hot pepper sauce to serve with turnip greens.  Today I gathered a large amount of turnips to put in the freezer for cold winter days.  First they must be washed to make sure they are clean and free of insects, etc.   Then I blanched them in hot water before freezing.  I had qt bags of turnip greens to put in the freezer.  Later when the roots are larger, I'll gather them and put them in the freezer to add to the greens when I cook them.

Guess what we had for dinner tonight?  Fresh turnip greens, with cabbage slaw, fresh green beans from KY, rice, hamburger steak with carmelized onions and green peppers, sliced tomatoes, pear relish, and for dessert, blueberry cobbler.  All this to celebrate the fresh turnip greens!!

Sisters Get Together

Sisters:  Nell, Susan, Judy, Alice, Carolyn

Five of our six sisters spent an evening in Black Mountain, NC last night (Fri, Oct 14, 2011) and went out to eat at a barbecue restaurant.  We were joined by 3 brothers-in-law, Jim Gilmer, Jerry Thrasher, and Bob Fletcher.  Also joining us for dinner were Carolyn's daughter Beth, her husband Matt, and 7-month-old daughter Natalie.

Judy came from Sarasota, FL to help Carolyn operate Arbor House B&B while Carolyn's husband Dave went to Myrtle Beach to play golf for a few days.  Alice and Jerry who live in Charlotte and  Susan and Bob who live in Greensboro, NC, drove up to Black Mountain so we could all be together on Friday night. We drove to NC on Friday on our way home from KY.

We got up early on Saturday and ate at the motel and were on the road home by 8:30 A.M.  Arrived back in Elba late in the afternoon.  Stopped several times on the way home.  It was a nice drive and we were happy to be home again after being gone for 6 days.



                         



Leaf Peepers!

Geraldine, Jim and Regina

We joined the caravan of "Leaf Peepers" and traveled as far north as Vanceburg, KY in northeastern KY. We spent the first night, Monday October 10,  in Chattanooga, arriving in Olive Hill, KY Tues. afternoon.  We visited Jim's Aunt Geraldine who lives about 15 miles north of Olive Hill - in the mountains.  The leaves were ablaze with color - the peak of the leaf "season".

It rained all day Monday and most of Tuesday on our way to KY.  But Tuesday afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out and the colors were brilliant.

We had fun in Laurel community visiting with Jim's aunt and cousin. Those two ladies have been canning all summer, getting ready for ice storms.  Last year they were without electricity for 11 days and this year they are prepared.  They have lots of canned veggies, etc. to eat if they are shut in from ice or snow.  We went to the local farmers market and bought beautiful tomatoes (picked ripe from the farm nearby), green beans, bell peppers, and fresh apples from the orchard on the top of the hill!

School days remembered - Curtis School Reunion today

Nell Gilmer speaking to the group

Sara Young, 94, visiting with Mary Ann Donaldson

Today was our country school (gone since the 1960's) reunion.  We held the reunion in the picnic pavilion behind New Ebenezer Baptist Church near where the old Curtis Jr High School was located.

People started arriving around 10:30 A.M.and it was a steady stream of people arriving for the next hour.

My friend Janice and I have chaired this reunion for 26 years and every year we say "This was the best reunion ever!" -   except for the year right after Hurricane Katrina when we had so many love bugs invading our area.  A few times it has been cold the
second Sat. in October, but usually it is warm by the noon hour.

We honor a family that attended Curtis school and sometimes an outstanding alumnus.  Today we honored my cousin, Jimmy Blankenship, an only child in his family.  He moved to Alexander City, AL when he was in the 7th grade and spent the rest of his life in northeast Alabama.

We printed a picture of grades 1-3 at Curtis school in the school year 1945-46 on front of a postcard that we used for the reunion announcement.  Today we honored people in the photo, along with Jimmy.

We had 75 in attendance, including spouses, and others. People still bring dishes of the past, i.e., chicken and dressing, homemade dumplings, fried chicken, all kinds of vegetables including sweet potatoes, peas, turnip greens.  The dessert table was laden with a big assortment of goodies and cakes.    Sweet tea is still the drink of choice at these reunions.

People kept visiting long after they had finished eating.  Lots of people helped put things in order and clean up the area.  It was indeed a "reunion" of old friends, old memories, and so much to talk

'Possum in the 'simmon tree; Raccoon on the ground

I  remember as a child hearing a bluegrass song on the Grand Ole Opry
that went something like this:  "Possum in a 'simmon tree; Raccoon on the ground.  'Possum said to raccoon, Throw them 'simmons down!"

We had wild persimmon trees on the farm and if we tried to eat them before the were ripe, it would cause our mouth to pucker up something terrible.  But ripe persimmons were juicy and sweet.  They were always better after the first frost.  We had a hard time getting them before the wild animals ate them up.

Our neighbors have nursery stock persimmon trees in their yards.  Two days ago I picked some of the fruit to slice and put in the dehydrator to dry.  It only takes two days to dry them to make them crisp and sweet.

When you slice the persimmons, there is a beautiful star design.  There are no seeds in the cultivated persimmons. If you wait until the persimmons are fully ripe, the slices are bright orange.

I plan to use some of my dried fruit to make a kitchen wreath for Thanksgiving.  I will use sticks of cinnamon with the persimmon slices, all strung on raffia and hang it in the kitchen window.  Then I will use the leftover to make delicious persimmon bread.

Preparing for another cold winter

Jim and our "free" firewood

My brother Perry cleared the woods along Beaver Dam Creek where he has property near the by-pass in Elba.  He cut the limbs of the hardwood trees for us to use as firewood in our fireplace.  Jim and I loaded this trailer and brought it home and unloaded it, to use this winter.  We love our warm and cozy fireplace when it's cold outside.

You can see the by-pass bridge behind the trailer.  A new bridge has been built for the extra 2 lanes that will be built later.

This is the cabin Perry is working on.  He added the deck first.  This is the back side, facing the creek and woods.  He recently added the windows and the view is beautiful from inside the cabin.

The next photo is a view of  the creek  which borders his property.  He cleared all the underbrush in order to see the creek.  This creek flooded the town of Elba in 1998 when it broke the levee.  There's about 5' of water in the creek when there's a heavy rain.

Our 58th anniversary today - October 3, 2011

October 1953,  At Troy State College

Fifty-eight years ago today, Jim and I were married in a civil ceremony in Greenville, SC.

He was in the army stationed at Fort Rucker, AL and I was a sophomore at Troy State College, Troy, AL.

I met Jim on a blind date in July that summer when he came to the college with a friend, who was dating one of my friends.  Three months later we got married.  And we are still married 58 years later!

How did we celebrate our anniversary today?  By staying home and relaxing after a hectic weekend of reunions (59th high school class reunion on Friday, Grimes reunion on Saturday, and a church picnic on Sunday afternoon at Brunson Farm.

We had turnip greens from our fall garden, left-over pasta salad from the weekend, grilled pork chops, sliced tomatoes and jalepeno cornbread baked in an iron skillet.  After dinner, I prepared a large pot of pear relish, using pears from one neighbor and sweet peppers from another neighbor.

We received phone calls, email messages and facebook messages today wishing us a Happy Anniversary.  I ordered a fresh flower arrangement for church next Sun. morning - for our anniversary.

As one of our sons observed at our 50th Anniversary celebration, we have been "happily incompatible" for all these years.