BH: So you had canned meat?
Ruth: Yes. And there's nothing quite as good as canned beef, and mashed potatoes and gravy. We cut meat from the bones, and canned what we didn't eat. And you had to boil 'em for about two hours in the boiler, you know. You heated them and put them in your jar. We had the old-fashioned Mason jars. . . and the zinc lids, with the glass inset in them. And. . . cooked your food and put in the jars and the rubber rings around the lids to seal 'em, and put 'em in the boiler on the stove, and boiled 'em for a long time. And canned lots of meat that way.
BH: Did you have trouble with critters eating your crops?
Ruth: No, not really. I don't recall having any trouble with that. But you know, year ago there was lots more feed on the mountain—lots more forage than there is now. We had a pretty bad drought there in the thirties, the early thirties—and ah, the forage has never really returned to what it was formerly, seems like. And my uncle, mother's brothers—Steven and Uncle Fred—said when they got here—when they came here from Henrietta, Texas, you could mow hay on the mountain—anywhere on the—on the flats out of the mountain, anywhere you wanted to. The grass really grew high—the grama grass, which is a very good um feed grass—and ah. . . you could, he said you could mow hay anywhere on the prairies. So they had to have had wonderful weather—lots of moisture.