Oral History Program Holly Ferria Interviewed by Shanna Richelle Seiler 15 February 2005 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Holly Ferria Interviewed by Shanna Richelle Seiler 15 February 2005 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ferria, Holly, an oral history by Shanna Richelle Seiler, 15 February 2005, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Holly Ferria. The interview was conducted on February 15, 2005, by Shanna Richelle Seiler, in Liberty, Utah. Ferria discusses her life and her mother and canning and bottling fruits. SS: Today’s date is February 15th, 2005 this is Shanna Seiler can you tell me your full name date and place of birth. HF: Holly Ferria, July 8, 1974, Logan Utah. SS: Okay, alright tell me where you grew up. HF: Um, let’s see, Morgan until I was 7 and um, liberty the rest of my life. SS: Can you tell me the names of all the brothers and sisters in your family. HF: Brandon and Jen Johnson. SS: Tell me about your mom, did she used to can, what did she can? HF: Hum, I remember her canning peaches, pears, applesauce, um, apricot nectar, jams, just lots of things. SS: Where did she get the fruits from? HF: Um let me thing, lets see, um some sometimes from grandpa who, sometimes we would just go buy it, my dad’s parents lived in Brigham, so they have lots of connections with the people in Willard who do the fruit market. So my grandma would always call us and say, “Oh the Weavers have Peaches.” We’d go get the peaches so-- SS: I interviewed Ralph Neilson from Neilson’s Produce 1 HF: Oh yeah? SS: Oh, he was so much fun, he’s a hoot; this is why I made jam, he sent me home with raspberries and strawberries HF: Oh really? SS: I’m all what am I going to do with all this stuff, so I made jam. Um do you remember how your mom used to do it? HF: The process you mean? SS: Yeah. HF: Well depending on which thing, I mean the fruit I mean; yeah I remember do you want me to tell you about them. Well the fruit, for peaches we would peal the peaches, get the jar put some sugar and water put a little lemon juice in there, we would slice up the peaches stick um in, get the lids hot and plop um on the jars, wipe the first so it would seal and then you would screw the lid on a plop it in the water bath. SS: How long in the day did it take? HF: I remember it was a multiple day project because she would do a lot and just do it all at once. She would get the fruit and it would be just this mad rush to hurry and can it all before it got to ripe so. SS: Did you use to do this with your mom? HF: Yeah when I was probably somewhere between ten and twelve, I don’t remember. SS: How did you learn how to do it? 2 HF: Just helping her, I know when I got married I had to make a few phone calls back, ‘mom should I do that, how long should I boil that,’ you know those kinds of things. It was just a little bit easier. SS: Did you enjoy having the bottled fruits when you were young? HF: Depends on what kid, I hated the peaches but she made us eat them, there to stringy. Yeah they get real fibery stuff around the pit, I just can’t stand it, it used to gross me out and they were always kinda brown. I liked the pears she always said those where to expensive so we didn’t always have those. But the jam and stuff, that’s great, I can’t, store bought jam, I just still can’t eat it, it’s just disgusting to me, I like the freezer jam better. Depended on. SS: Did she ever do canned raspberries? HF: Bottled raspberries, you know, I think when I was younger she used to try a lot more things and as I got older she really focused it on the main things that we ate, like, I member for a while she did bottled cherries to make cherry pies and apple to do the same thing and I think she did try bottled raspberries but it wasn’t something’s she kept going long term it was just while we were little and she didn’t have any money she would bottle everything. I even member, well I don’t remember this but she’s told me this that while I was a baby she used to take squash, and she would bottle squash so that she could turn it into baby food for us. She really bottled a lot of stuff for us. She bottled everything. 3 HF: I never really liked them, but I do remember her trying them for a few years. She pretty much just stuck to peaches, pears and applesauce and that was like, she would, would do 70 or 80 quarts of each. So that’s pretty much it. SS: Do you remember the kinds of jams she would do? HF: I know she… I’m not remembering exactly, but strawberry, raspberry, peach, and think those were the three main ones. Because as a family, I think she tried the huckleberries or whatever, but none of us really like it they were kinda sour. SS: When did you start canning? HF: By myself? SS: Yeah. HF: Um, when I got married, when I was eighteen. SS: Do you still do it? HF: Yeah. SS: Why do you continue to do it? HF: We like the way it tastes better then the boughten. SS: So you would can jam before you would go out and buy it? HF: Oh definitely. SS: Do you think it saves you money in the long run? HF: I think it’s marginal because I pretty much have to buy all my fruit and everything. The jams, we have a strawberry patch so that one probably does because I can pick my own 4 strawberries. All the fruit and everything that I have to can we have to go buy it and we pay to buy it, the sugar and everything that goes in it. I don’t know if we really do save money. A toss-up. SS: Do you ever go out to the Brigham City Fruit way and get your fruit? HF: That’s where we always get it. SS: Do you make it like a day trip? HF: Um, no usually. (Stop Tape.) SS: Um, now I don’t remember where I’m at, um, you started making jam when you got married at eighteen right, do you remember why you started? HF: Um, I think back then I kinda taught it would save us money, and Mark grew up on canned fruits, it’s just kind of what you did. But I think I did think it would save us money. SS: Why do you continue to do it today? HF: Um, cause just taste. SS: Who do you usually can with? HF: Um, when I first started canning I would come up and do it with my mom, but now I just do it by myself. I know I have friends that get together and do it, but for me I just kind of squeeze it in. SS: Have you ever gone down to the community cannery? 5 HF: No, I always have the problem of what I would do with my kids, I definitely can less now then I did at first, I was really ambitions at first, I don’t can applesauce, I’m sick and tired of doing it and I don’t think it tastes any better so so I quit doing that. This year we weren’t going to can beans so we bought some and they were gross. They were rubbery so we are going back to canning them. It kinda boils down to taste. SS: Do you think that you’ll teach your daughter how to do it? HF: Yeah and my boys actually, they help to, um it’s not really fun they just do. There’s not a lot they can do when their little a lot of times I’ll have them stir the sugar into the water. When we do beans, that’s a good one, I can get them all snapping beans. I like to bottle apples cause I like to make my own apple pie, I don’t like store bought it’s really yucky so I have these little things they can stick it on and twirl it and spiral it ya know, so that’s their favorite they love to do it. That’s they kinda thing I have them do but I’m sure they see me do it. SS: Do you usually use the hot water bath or do you use the pressure cooker? HF: I use a pressure cooker for any kinda vegetable. I did tomatoes for a while, but it takes almost an hour to process tomatoes, so I quit doing that because it’s so hard and it takes so long. But for my fruit, I know they like you to do the hot water syrup, but I just do it the way my mom always did, none of us ever died form it so. Now if you go to the extension service or get the books that they write about canning they always tell you to dot his other method where you boil the syrup then you pure a boiling syrup on your fruit and put it in water that is already boiled that’s not how we did it. SS: When did you get your canning equipment? 6 HF: Everything’s been just purchased over time, except I have a very old water bath canner that my mom gave me but it’s so rusty I need to get a new one, but everything else we have just gradually over the years purchased. SS: Do you remember when she gave you the water bath? HF: I think right off because she had two of them, it took us probably two to four years, we right off had a water bath and I know we bought a pressure cooker right off ‘cause we wanted to do tomatoes. Oh and just the little things, we got one of those where you put t he apples in and it squishes it, oh and we got a juicer right off because we like juice. SS: How do you do your grape juice? HF: Um, we just go to grandpa and pick the grapes, we wash them and throw them in the juicer and the juice comes out. The hard part is finding the fruit because up here we can grow our own. SS: How much do you usually can in a year? HF: Total everything, oh wow. Probably do about 30-40 quarts of peaches and pears, probably 60 quarts of green beans and a lot of times we didn’t eat it all so we do 50 quarts of apricots and about 20 quarts of grape juice, jam I don’t know I just go until the shelves full and then I stop. We eat a lot of jam so I probably do 18 pints of strawberry, and if I can get raspberries but I don’t do as many cause I like to train the seeds out and it’s hard so about 6_9 raspberry. We kind of gage about how much we need. SS: I bet you we all use the same recipes because I know that my mom got hers from grandma and grandma got hers from her mom. 7 HF: When I got married I had to do a lot of it different because Mark grew up with everything, with tunes of sugar, just gobs of sugar, so like the way we would can we would put a quarter of a cup a sugar and his mother put a half a cup of sugar so when we got married I tried doing it his way at first, but that’s how she likes the jam. SS: Do you remember grandma canning? HF: I remember her telling me she canned but I have never been at her house when she did it. My mom canned everything; I pretty much just stick with everything. I don’t like store bought pears and peaches I think there to crunchy, obviously we don’t like beans so I don’t buy the beans. Applesauce I could care less so we buy it. There’s just no flavor to the fruit. It’s just sugary. I have to say a lot of time what I can is just acquired tastes. SS: Do you think you will continue to do it? HF: Oh yeah, especially those certain things that I just can’t replace. We will either quit eating that food item if I get sick of canning it or we just can it. Actually I have learned to like peaches. My mom always canned the kind that came from grandpas trees and they would always turn brown and we buy a different kind that are much prettier, the nice pink pretty ones so now I really like them. You know how sometimes the fruit juice turns pink because the centers are pink and their just awesome. It’s a sense of accomplishment when you go wow look at all those bottles and I hate to break into it at first, all that hard work nobody is going to eat it we are just going to look at it for a while. Yeah like we used to have a cherry tree but now we don’t have a cherry tree so I don’t take the time to eat cherries. 8