I have always loved songs by John Denver. A while back I purchased two CDs of his greatest hits. I knew many of them, but not all of them. Some of the newer ones have become my favorites. I especially love “Some Days are Diamonds, Some Days are Stones”. That song has come to mean so much to me. I remember having days that were diamonds while others were stones. At any rate I survived them all.

Another song that I like is “Grandma’s Feather Bed.” While I never slept in a feather bed, I do remember sleeping three in a bed at my aunt’s house. The song says “nine feet high and six feet wide” but I am sure it was not really that size, it probably felt that big to youngsters.

Note here, I could not possibly sleep in a feather bed because of my allergies. Those feathers would have me sneezing all night and getting me all stuffed up. I do recall that I slept on a feather pillow once and that drove me crazy.

I investigated what it took to make a feather bed. They were quite common in the good old days. People used feathers to create a bed so as not to have to purchase a mattress and box spring.

My source said that one lady raised a flock of geese to create several mattresses. Although it took her quite a while to collect the feathers, she managed to create enough mattresses for her family.

She lived on a farm where she raised many animals. She loved to try raising new breeds of chickens. She always ordered just a few to try them out. That was what she did with geese. She ordered just a few. She actually ordered eggs. She intended to get her hens to hatch them.

Now hens are used to a three-week period of incubation. Goose eggs take four weeks to hatch. Some of the hens tired of the long incubation and left the eggs. Those did not hatch. She got so she could persuade the hens to sit longer.

`The hens, however, were not prepared to see their offspring go for a swim. They created an awful fuss trying to corral them.

Her flock of Toulouse geese gradually increased to close to thirty animals. Each summer there was a goose-picking day. On that day the paddock was closed so the geese could not get out to pasture. The goose to be picked was captured. To avoid injury to each goose she caught them by the neck and the wings were held down. The goose was then turned upside down so the breast area was exposed. One hand was used for plucking. The geese offered little resistance to the process but were ready to run when they were released.

Old flour sacks were filled with feathers. It was said if six sacks of feathers were gathered in a season it was a good haul. Patience was the name of the game since it took several seasons to make a feather bed.

I don’t know about you, but that seems like a lot of work to me. Back then, people had more patience. In our throw away society it would not be done.

Like many of the things that we did, feather beds went by the wayside.

Canning seems to be making a resurgence. Many young people learn to can. I lived in the country so it was expected that I would learn to can. It certainly was trial and error. I read those canning books while things were growing so that I would be ready to preserve them. Even with the reading I did, I had some failures. Lessons were learned the hard way.

Spring and fall cleaning has also disappeared. I used to take my rugs outside and beat them in the good old days. Now I use my vacuum and call it enough. I did rotate my living room rug this fall to equalize the wear.

Although I did not have time to do some of the old things once I went to work, I continued to can. We loved the home canned things. I could not stand to see things go to waste either. I used every part of what we grew.

We also had bees. The honey was great for canning. It came in handy when sugar was scarce during the seventies. Things tasted a little different, but they were good. I used honey to can my peaches, pears, and applesauce. My nephew asked me what I did. He said they were very good.

When canning lids were hard to find I removed the pits from some things and put more in each jar. There was always a way, you just had to be creative.

Ann Swanson writes from her home in Russell. Contact her at hickoryheights1@verizon.net.