Alfred continues with some more detail of farm work, but he does move on to talk about other activities on the farm.
"Our farm, or rather Grandfathers, was small, consisting of 47 acres and we had to utilize every foot of it for production and naturally conserve anything that had a semblance of forage for the stock. In my teenage the corn shredder made it appearance. The same process of cutting was used but the shredder was something on the order of a thrashing machine. Some power, the steam engine, water wag on and a lot of man power. It took several men to load the shocks on the wagons and then hauled to the shredder, where the corn was picked from the husks and by various belts & elevators it was dropped in the wagon; in the process the fodder was cut into small pieces and blown into the hay mow of the barn. This made excellent feed, for none of it would deteriorate in the weather. We never used this method, first it was more expensive and secondly we didn’t have enough barn room.
Another chore befor frost was the cane patch – Patch is the proper word for we would only plant about one quarter of an acre in it. This was a hard crop to raise – when it first came up, it looked like crab grass and had to be hoed several times. Of course it would get plowed in due time. The job of harvesting was a lot of work – first it had to be “Stripped” or all the blades or leaves pulled off; then the job of topping or cutting the tops off (the tops were carefully taken car of for seed and the balance use to feed the chickens – it was a side line job to separate the grain from the husks and then fan the chaff out – all hand operation.) Third the base stalks were cut close to the ground and stacked into piles. Fourth – It was loaded on wagons and hauled to the cane mill. Here it was processed, by pressing the juice from the stalks and the juice cooked in large pans and the final product, sorghum molasses, which was an important food item.
A winter job besides the feeding was work in the woods and in the wood log. Trees were cut down by the back breaking job of the cross-cut saw and ox. Blocks were cut from the tree log in lengths to fit the stove and of course they had to be split. The wood would be hauled to the wood yard and corded in rows and carried to the house and stacked in the wood box. Through the winter months we tried to hit a time when snow was on the ground and would haul the wood on a sled. This made loading and unloading easier because the sled was not as high as the wagon – Also much of the corn fodder was hauled with a sled. Now it wasn’t all work on the farm – of course there were Sundays – No work, only necessary chores as feeding the stock, milking, etc. To church and Sunday School in the morning. It was four and one-fourth miles to town and transportation was the old hack if everybody went (and only bad weather would keep all from going) or the horse and buggy. Church would last until 12 noon and it took an hour or more to get home for dinner. Many was the times that I walked in the winter time. The afternoons we had to ourselves and as a rule I went to the homes of Wm D. or Fred Kramer to play. These were boys of my age and in the summer we would go swimming, fishing, play Town Ball and in the winter we would skate or go coasting on sleds if there was snow on the ground. It seems to me that we had a lot more snow when I was a kid than we have today. Then there were days that the weather was bad and according to the season of the year, we would hunt squirrels, go fishing, hunt rabbits and sometimes go night hunting for fur bearing animals, such as coon, opossum, skunk but I don’t remember of ever catching any of these animals at night."
The church that Alfred and grandparents attended was the Reformed Church located in Linton shown below:
Here is a plat map of Greene County showing all of the townships. Both the Tendick farm and the town of Linton were located in Stockton Township which is the middle west most side of the county.
No comments:
Post a Comment