Keeping History "Currant"

     To me, today seems like a perfect autumn day, with the geese honking as they fly overhead, the clippety-clop of hooves on the pavement as horses pull a harvest wagon up the road, and the young cockerels getting their rooster crow on, welcoming the dawn.  The falling leaves and gentle breezes of autumn are so welcoming that the windows are opened wide, and the first of our autumn decor found its way out before Labor Day.  Yet with all this beautiful weather, there also comes the dreaded word... work.

     The garden has been long overdue for some tlc since August crept up on us, and the harvest kept us hopping.  Yesterday evening we ignored much of the weedy patches and harvests, only pulling weeds and picking produce here and there, and instead started our garden winterization as the temperatures began to dip, and my nervousness began to skyrocket.  Although the temperatures may return to summer and the 90s next week, it's always good to get a head start on winterizing as we never seem to finish it before winter!  ("Last year" we actually put the garden to bed at the beginning of this year.)

     Our project last night was planting some of our fall transplants.  No, not the broccoli and cauliflower.  They'll be tucked into the greenhouse a little bit later.  Instead, we transplanted our blueberry bushes, soapwort and currant bushes that were taking up much of the greenhouse.  Of these plants, the ones I am most excited and nervous about are the currant bushes as they are literally living "family" heirlooms that I am now charged with trying to keep living!  Yikes!

     As history-people it's no wonder that we like heirloom plants, but when my mother asked if I wanted the currant bushes, I almost jumped for joy!  The currant bushes had originally come from my great great grandparents' farm.  

     Curtis Custer Carbaugh once lived a few miles outside of Tionesta, Forest County, Pennsylvania in the community of Nebraska.  A blacksmith by trade, Curtis and his wife Eva May Whitman raised their nine children - Grace, Viola, Floyd, Emma, Everett, Orion, Harry, Dorothy, and George - on the farm that was once considered one of the best producing farms in the area.  Although the farm is no longer in our family, it is still a working farm (unlike so many other ancestral farms in my line) and now called Pleasant Valley Farm.  

Curtis Custer Carbaugh and Eva May Whitman, lovingly known as
"Grandma and Grandpa on the farm"

     My mother received the currant bushes this summer from her uncle, whose father was a son of Curtis Custer Carbaugh.  Unfortunately, once she got them home, after somehow managing to cram them into the backseat of the car along with all their camping gear, she realized that she didn't have a suitable place to plant them.  It took me a whole month to then decide where exactly I was going to plant them as well!  Now they are happily in the ground at the edge of our garden.  I certainly hope they make it through the winter, and next year, we may be lucky enough to get a few currants from them.  For now, the winterization of our garden will continue as I nervously nurse our new plants.  

Do you have any "family" heirlooms in your garden?