Times of Real Sugar

This ornate real silver (I had to polish the tarnish off for the picture) "sugar shell" was always in the sugar bowl which was ALWAYS on the kitchen table along with the toothpick holder earlier noted. Real sugar was used on cereal, in coffee and tea, on those fresh garden tomatoes, wherever a person needed a little extra sweetness. I don't know the exact origin of the spoon -- I think it may have been a wedding gift. It is another one of those things that has always "just been there" and taken for granted. Our kitchen table had a certain amount of "middle stuff" that just stayed on the table at all times. There were always 3 meals a day at that table and sometimes, a little late afternoon lunch, besides. Sometimes, those lunches were packed in a basket or box and taken out to the fields so the farming would have minimal time interruption. Our evening meal on the farm (supper, it was called) was sometimes as late as 10 o'clock at night. We consumed the calories, but, we also worked them away !! In the spring planting season and fall harvest season, the farm work was going on nearly 24 hours a day-- machinery and people, a nearly constant hum. Planting and harvesting of crops had to be done in tune with weather conditions. If it didn't get done, it could make a huge dip in the income for the year. "Make hay while the sun shines", an adage well known to a farmer, meant more than "making hay" !!