The “JOY” of Farming

 

I think this post tells so much about Mom.  Why she still enjoys to work outside…and work hard.  Why she has such a love for farming.   She loved farming, before she loved Jess.  Her love for farming has nothing to do with Money.

 

      “When we arrived at the old house, May 1935 there hadn’t been any farm work done  .My mother and I cut all the spuds that were planted.  The cutting board was put up in the orchard.  It consisted of  several boards with a knife in the end of it.  We sat on  a chair with a potato sack under the knife and cut each potato in the size for seed.  Each seed had to have an eye for growth.   I cut all day and at age eleven they were long days.

  As soon as the crops and garden were all planted  the beets came up and had to be thinned.  This consisted of chopping a six inch space, with a long handled hoe and if there was more than one beet left, you bent over and pulled the extras out by hand.  Beets needed space to grow and expand.   As soon as that was done, we started hoeing the spud and beets fields for weeds.  They didn’t have chemicals to spray for weeds so we worked the entire summer hoeing, except when it was time to cut the hay.

 

 

 

  The hay was mowed and then a dump rake, pulled by a team of horses, would break the long swaths into bundles.  We let the hay dry for a few days and then would turn each bundle over so it could dry on the under side.  When dry, the hay was pitched on to a wagon and we helped stack it.  At the barn it had to be unloaded off the wagon, with a single horse, led by me, to pull the fork full of hay off the wagon onto the stack. There was no monetary reward but we had the satisfaction of knowing we were helping.  Someone once said, What a lot of money we would get from selling potatoes.  I told them that wasn't the joy of farming.  The joy was raising the crop and seeing it harvested, not the money.