Remember When: Knowing when to plant and enjoy the snow cream

By Guest Columnist Mary Jane Boutwell

The time is getting close to planting a garden. Several conversations lately have brought back memories of doing it wrong. One was Grandmaw having the workers plant the corn crop during a wonderful spell in January. After Daddy jumped all over her for planting at the wrong time, it was the best crop ever. 
Then someone planted field corn in July. All the farmers teased him about his bad timing. A beautiful crop–two small trailer loads were swapped for a gilt, female first time bred pig. That, with a barn full of corn, helped feed a growing family. Oh, the corn variety in Mexican Hune. It was planted in Mexico in June. July in Mississippi worked–that year. 

It has been interesting to see the renewed interest in home gardening. COVID had a lot to do with that. But raised beds, working with children, older adults, and handicapped people –outside- and introducing different foods have been a great benefit. 

I remember going out East Peace Street. You could occasionally see a lady behind a fence on the south side. She was working on her raised bed garden from a wheelchair. I always thought she was one of the victims of the early 1950s polio epidemic. Her get up and go did not get up and went. 

Even though following a mule was not always the most pleasant place to be, the plowboys learned a lot. You can tolerate and work around a stubborn smelly mule. At least the smell may pass. 

It is possible to walk and work a field that today would be considered the wrong texture–as wrong as pork fat, fried food, whole milk, butter–lots of things. 
But, I do know of one young boy who learned during those days following a mule. Years later, he applied that knowledge to mechanical farming. He would walk into a field, kick a clod of dirt, and tell if it was ready to plant. A lot of dirt clods kicked behind a mule-pulled plow. 

With the extreme cold we have had the past several weeks, this next bit seems appropriate–especially if you live a few miles north of Canton. 

A young Mississippi man stationed at the Chicago Navy base was there for the first food snowfall of the season. He got milk, sugar, vanilla and a bowl. Mixing the first of these ingredients into a bowl, he went looking. The close-by parking lot had an area of clean deep snow. Surely, we have all had snow cream. When the other sailors saw what he was doing, there were questions and laughter. After completing the concoction, an area of the parking lot was roped off with threats if anything dirtied the snow. 

Recently, I was looking through some older cookbooks. Snow ice cream–cook the milk and sugar, add a can of sweetened condensed milk. Sounds to me you would need to get the ice cream freezer out. 

One last tale–back in the late 1930s/early 1940s, my older brother was making ice cream on a late spring day. The freezer was a bucket with ice , some salt, and a syrup bucket with a handle for the milk mixture. As the bucket was twisted back and forth by the hand, a spring blizzard flew in. With snow blowing on them, they finished the ice cream and enjoyed eating it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary Jane Boutwell is a passionate historian and is thrilled to share stories about “way back when”.