Good luck with your project! :)

You may want to cross-post this on the canning forum, fruit tree forum, etc.

Velvet ~:>

I'm putting a link to the Minnesota gardening forum below. I bet they can give you all the info you're looking for.

From one writer to another, good luck!

Hello MaureenMargaret and welcome to the forum! I am also writing an historical novel set here in Ontario in the 1880s... so I know exactly what you are going through trying to get reliable, local information about the nitty-gritty details of farming and rural life.

A few suggestions: local histories and contemporary accounts. Here in Canada there was a great deal of local history recorded around the time of our Centennial in 1967. I'm sure lots was produced for the Bicentennial celebrations as well. A useful website for finding such accounts is http://www.abebooks.com (ABE Books). Use the search function there to zero in on the place and era you are looking for.

Be sure to try:
The Old Timer's Page at http://waltonfeed.com/old/

The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture at http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/index.html

There should be a lot of info online if you put your keywords into Google... Whatever did we do without the Internet to speed up research?

You might also call some local old age homes and see if any of the seniors there would talk to you about life in the 20s and 30s. They'd have been kids at the time, but likely have a lot of information about the time you are interested in.

I know these suggestions do nothing toward giving you the specific information you are looking for. Perhaps local farming folk could help you out with harvest dates for wheat. Maybe hit a farmer's market or two and talk to people. They are usually interested when you tell them you are writing a book and can be surprisingly helpful.

As for preserving... what fruits and vegetables were commonly grown there? Here fall would mean apples, pears and plums. Also canned pumpkin for pies. It would mean making mincemeat for winter and I suppose that was canned as well. Root vegetables were usually stored in a fruit cellar but the late season tomatoes would certainly have been canned. Cabbage was cellared or pickled -- made into saurkraut in some cultures. The young cockerels and old hens would have been killed off and some of the meat was likely canned as well. So you have lots of choices for whatever scene the canning shows up in.

Good luck with it and be sure to check on the other Garden Web forums that are relevent. Hope you find what you need.

I grew up in Minnesota and spent several years on my aunt and uncles farm in western Minnesota near the Dakota border. This must have been about the 1930s, as I was about 10 or 12 years old.

If you would care to, my e-mail is beejayc@earthlink.net, perhaps I could help with your project, as far as life on the farm - back in those days. Uncle raised wheat, corn, oats, barley, and we all helped at threshing times.

Good luck with your writing.

Bejay