Making sauerkraut

I love the times when we could make sauerkraut. We grew the cabbage in our garden. We took a number two wash tub into the garden and cut cabbage off the stock and carried them to the porch. We took off the top leaves in order to get the dirty leaves out of the way. We cut the cabbage away from the core and cut it in long slices. My favorite part of cabbage is the core. I love to eat the core when it's fresh.

We had a wide mouth crock jar. This jar was a little over 2 feet tall. We would put a layer of cabbage which had been sliced and cover that with salt. We would put another layer of cabbage and add another layer salt. Thus we layered cabbage and salt to the top, check that, almost to the top. We would take a clean cloth which was white and place over the top of the last layer salt. We would take a rock which had been cleaned and lay it on top of the cloth. This would hold the cabbage down while it was souring. We children were always slipping into the crock jar removing the rock and the cloth and taking out the cabbage and eat it while it was in the process of souring.