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- #21
I was raised on a dairy also. My father was "Dairyman of the Year" for Ga. a couple of times. My mother is kind of a cross between Mammy Yokum and the woman in Grant Wood's painting, "American Gothic".... talk about Puritan work ethic. As a kid I remember never mentioning being a farmgirl, actually thinking the townkids had more fun, living like little Opie, windowshopping while eating ice cream cones every day. I was embarrassed at silage cutting time when the kids on the sch. bus responded to the fermentation at the silos with a "Phew!". My aunt, by marriage only, branded us the family hicks, because my brothers and I went barefoot, squishing cow manure between our toes, and because we had no set suppertime. Supper happened whenever the last cow was milked or the last tractor parked.
It was only when I went to college and a classmate who had asked about my background said, "Wow! You get to eat all those fresh vegetables!" with a slight air of jealousy, that I began to realize how lucky I had been to have been raised on that farm on Beech Creek.
There were unlimited acres to explore and I could often get out of chores by going fishing. Mama didn't fish, but loved to eat fish. She always knew where to find the best earthworms, often surprising me with a canfull. As long as I showed back up by dark, it seems no one worried about me. I guess humans were all I was taught to really be wary of. I learned to tell a watermoccaisan from a stick on the bank by it's lack of sharp angles. As long as he stayed on his bank and I on mine, it was business as usual. A stringer of bream or catfish with a bass or two made me haughtily proud, enough to hope someone spotted me when I crossed the road to go home, but if the fish were sleepy that day, the beaver and kingfishers would often entertain, and the icy water dissolved the worst August heat.
Food,wonderful food! Mama and I were in charge of that, after Daddy plowed and fertilized the garden. My brothers kept busy with the tractor- driving on the rest of the farm. From spring till fall, all of her time not spent with milking , Mama used making sure there was plenty to eat. Her mother had died when she was six, and being raised mostly by siblings during the depression, I think she'd always been insecure about having enough...of anything. Her 1 inch bathwater limitation would explain my extravagence of bubblebaths today. But there was never any stinginess with the food she grew. During the summer there might be a meal with, not a meat and three, but up to ten vegetables available. She had an old canning sink on the back porch, laden in the summer with tomatoes and cucumbers for snacking. We'd eat whole ones rather than have to put anything up. In season, the sink would contain half a watermelon, for anyone passing through to whack off a chunk of and eat over the sink or outside, where you could have seed spitting contests. There probably wasn't any harvestable crop she didn't try at one time or another...except collards. I never tried those until fairly recently, and found that I love them. I think it must have been cultural... they were associated with being "low class" I guess. I remember the whole family digging potatoes until the year that the rats, we assumed, got them before we did. Don't think they planted so many after that. Mama kept years' worth of canned goods in her wellhouse, and a huge freezer full. She grew enough for an army, so if we had a bad crop, there'd still be enough for a family of five. When she ran out of space and jars, she'd throw the extra vegetables over the fence to the heifers. A few select friends were invited to stop by to take home surplus vegetables, but for the most part, Mama's attitude was that if folks were too lazy to grow their own, they weren't getting hers. When Daddy built a small house so that he could take on a hired hand, he plowed the man's family a garden. Imagine my mother's indignation when they did not weed it. Pity the person who has a garden across the fence from my mother's own. When these neighbors did work in their garden, it was after a rain. The very thought of them out packing down the soil just drove my mother crazy!
I can't say that I enjoyed gardening then. There was just too much of it, and it was yet another thing I did because I had to. But I learned a lot. I remember the first time I was asked to plant, rather than just weed. When the plants came up they were so close together that I had to pull 70 % out. I remember when I was sent out to hoe some of Daddy's field corn on the sandy creekside. I had been foolish enough to go barefoot, and the sand got so hot that as I was running home, I'd stop and momentarily stand on the hoe because it was actually less hot. I was never so glad to get to the creek crossing.
Now that I can make my own decisions, gardening ones anyway, I'm thankful to have had and learned from these experiences, and I think part of me did enjoy gardening then, but just didn't know it.
It was only when I went to college and a classmate who had asked about my background said, "Wow! You get to eat all those fresh vegetables!" with a slight air of jealousy, that I began to realize how lucky I had been to have been raised on that farm on Beech Creek.
There were unlimited acres to explore and I could often get out of chores by going fishing. Mama didn't fish, but loved to eat fish. She always knew where to find the best earthworms, often surprising me with a canfull. As long as I showed back up by dark, it seems no one worried about me. I guess humans were all I was taught to really be wary of. I learned to tell a watermoccaisan from a stick on the bank by it's lack of sharp angles. As long as he stayed on his bank and I on mine, it was business as usual. A stringer of bream or catfish with a bass or two made me haughtily proud, enough to hope someone spotted me when I crossed the road to go home, but if the fish were sleepy that day, the beaver and kingfishers would often entertain, and the icy water dissolved the worst August heat.
Food,wonderful food! Mama and I were in charge of that, after Daddy plowed and fertilized the garden. My brothers kept busy with the tractor- driving on the rest of the farm. From spring till fall, all of her time not spent with milking , Mama used making sure there was plenty to eat. Her mother had died when she was six, and being raised mostly by siblings during the depression, I think she'd always been insecure about having enough...of anything. Her 1 inch bathwater limitation would explain my extravagence of bubblebaths today. But there was never any stinginess with the food she grew. During the summer there might be a meal with, not a meat and three, but up to ten vegetables available. She had an old canning sink on the back porch, laden in the summer with tomatoes and cucumbers for snacking. We'd eat whole ones rather than have to put anything up. In season, the sink would contain half a watermelon, for anyone passing through to whack off a chunk of and eat over the sink or outside, where you could have seed spitting contests. There probably wasn't any harvestable crop she didn't try at one time or another...except collards. I never tried those until fairly recently, and found that I love them. I think it must have been cultural... they were associated with being "low class" I guess. I remember the whole family digging potatoes until the year that the rats, we assumed, got them before we did. Don't think they planted so many after that. Mama kept years' worth of canned goods in her wellhouse, and a huge freezer full. She grew enough for an army, so if we had a bad crop, there'd still be enough for a family of five. When she ran out of space and jars, she'd throw the extra vegetables over the fence to the heifers. A few select friends were invited to stop by to take home surplus vegetables, but for the most part, Mama's attitude was that if folks were too lazy to grow their own, they weren't getting hers. When Daddy built a small house so that he could take on a hired hand, he plowed the man's family a garden. Imagine my mother's indignation when they did not weed it. Pity the person who has a garden across the fence from my mother's own. When these neighbors did work in their garden, it was after a rain. The very thought of them out packing down the soil just drove my mother crazy!
I can't say that I enjoyed gardening then. There was just too much of it, and it was yet another thing I did because I had to. But I learned a lot. I remember the first time I was asked to plant, rather than just weed. When the plants came up they were so close together that I had to pull 70 % out. I remember when I was sent out to hoe some of Daddy's field corn on the sandy creekside. I had been foolish enough to go barefoot, and the sand got so hot that as I was running home, I'd stop and momentarily stand on the hoe because it was actually less hot. I was never so glad to get to the creek crossing.
Now that I can make my own decisions, gardening ones anyway, I'm thankful to have had and learned from these experiences, and I think part of me did enjoy gardening then, but just didn't know it.
