Ohio Farm de WHEELER MCMILLEN

Ohio Farm

WHEELER MCMILLEN

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 29 ian 2021

A nostalgic and instructive view into life on a Midwestern farm in the early twentieth century, from farming techniques to reflective moments and community highlights, enhanced by whimsical line drawings.

Originally published in 1974, this memoir fondly and vividly recalls life on the McMillen family farm in western Ohio, describing in rich detail the daily and seasonal activities that marked the cyclical progression of farm life. Uncomplicated when compared with the task of managing today's highly mechanized agricultural complexes, life on the early twentieth-century small farm entailed hard work and afforded simple pleasures that brought satisfaction and enjoyment to the farm and family. Farming on that scale and in the same manner has now become almost completely infeasible, yet in those times a good farmer could prosper and become independent. Wheeler McMillen’s father, Lewis, did both. Relying frequently on his father’s account books and concise diaries, McMillen recounts the immense labor that farming demanded before the advent of the tractor and the combine harvester. He evokes the special excitements of having company for Sunday dinner, attending the annual oyster supper at the Grange Hall, and gathering on the Fourth of July with the interminable wait for darkness to fall. McMillen also portrays the quiet peace and ineffable joy of private moments, such as resting the horses during spring plowing to watch bronzed grackles search for food in the freshly turned furrows.

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The garden was basic. In late winter the plot was covered liberally with rich soil stimulants from the horse stables. As soon as the earth was warmed and not too damp, it was plowed, harrowed thoroughly, and smoothed. Stakes and strings marked out the rows, and, along each at the appropriate times, the seeds and plants were placed. Within short weeks the first harvests would yield radishes, leaf lettuce, and green peas. In due time the beets and carrots, string, pole, and lima beans, and the early potatoes were ready.

From a greenhouse in town we had bought cabbage and sweet potato plants, and dozens of tomato plants. These yielded table supplies until into winter, as did the parsnips. Before even the first radish could be pulled, the perennial rhubarb had responded to the sun. Some of the long and tender stalks had been snapped off, their big green leaves lopped, and their sour succulence turned into sauce or baked into pies. Those who nowadays expect to find almost every item, regardless of the local season, displayed daily in the supermarkets will not fully appreciate the pleasant anticipation with which we awaited the first dish from each garden crop nor the delight with which we relished it, knowing always that each had its own season and that when that passed we would have to wait most of the year until another summer.

More than to anything else we looked forward to the ripening of the roasting ears. Two rows of sweet corn were planted, then ten days or two weeks later another two, and finally a third pair, thus to extend the season as long as possible. Out of the garden and into the pot with only time enough to remove the husks, the gleaming ears came hot to the table ready to be bathed in butter and eaten in what approached ecstasy. We enjoyed them usually at least once a day while they lasted, and didn't mind having them for both dinner and supper.

If enough ears were available, as usually they were, Mother sliced the grains from a considerable number and spread them on a cloth in the sun, or in the store room, under a mosquito netting to keep off the flies. When the corn was fully dehydrated, she hung it up in a cotton bag to be saved for winter, when we liked it only a little less than when gnawed fresh from the cobs.

Rival to the roasting ear weeks and coming a bit sooner, strawberry time enriched the early summer. Each spring Father set out new rows. From these the blossoms were pinched off to allow the plants to give all their attention to growing. Late the next May their modest white blossoms peeped from under the leaves and gave way to promising green berries that soon—and none too soon for us—turned beautifully scarlet and crimson. The first ripe quarts adorned enough biscuit-dough shortcake to provide each of us with firsts and seconds—the cake well soaked in enticing red juice and enhanced by as much cream or milk as one cared to apply. Until the berry vines ceased their fruiting we reveled daily at dinner and supper and often breakfast over generous bowls of the ever-delicious berries and the satisfying goodness of Mother's shortcakes. Those underprivileged persons who know of strawberry shortcake only as the hotel species of dry pastry, six hard berries, and a dab of synthetic whipped cream can form no idea of the genuine and perfect creation.

The acre and a half of apple orchard Father had set out soon after he bought the farm brought him disappointment. He was fond of apples, and had memories of those he had enjoyed in boyhood days. The nursery that had supplied the trees evidently had been careless or unreliable, for few turned out to be the varieties he had ordered. Then, by the time the few good ones began to bear fruit, the years had arrived when orchard insects became so plentiful that without frequent spraying much of the fruit was imperfect. Proper and timely application of sprays interfered so much with more important farm work that Father decided to leave the orchard to its fate, which ultimately was to be an acre and
a half of uprooted trees.

Nevertheless, by early July the Red Astrachans, handsomely greenish with red stripes, were ready for Mother to turn into pies, cobblers, and apple sauce. A few later trees bore good cooking apples, which she patiently pared and cut out the damaged portions. "Too good to throw away," she said.

Pumpkins became plentiful by September, for they grew abundantly along with the corn in a nearby field. Every week until well into winter she baked pumpkin pies along with her others.

In addition to the small garden north of the house, an acre or more in some nearby field was set apart as the "truck patch." Here the major supply of potatoes grew, along with extra rows of sweet corn, tomatoes, late cabbage, cucumbers, and muskmelons. Freshly ripened tomatoes came to the table from summer until frost, and so many went into Mason jars that the reserve was never quite exhausted. Through the winter stewed tomatoes were on the menu almost daily. We did not know about vitamins then, or buy orange juice, so perhaps the tomatoes provided for a bodily need of which we were not aware. Anyway, we liked them; and Mother's tomato soup is a cherished memory.

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Contents
Preface ix
1 The Years of Copper 3
2 Mother and the Twentieth-Century House 19
3 Hired Men Were Characters 31
4 Self-sufficient—Almost But Not Quite 43
5 The Years Began with Spring 57
6 The Lively Old Summertime 77
7 Threshing—the Glamor Job 87
8 Corn Knife and Husking Peg 101
9 The Meat-makers of Winter 117
10 Animals, Cranks to Turn, and Buried Labor 131
11 The Rural Social Whirl 149
12 Educator and Citizen 167
13 Neighbors and Incidents 179
14 Buggy and Model T 191
15 The Setting and Some Contrasts 203
16 The Later Years 211

Ohio Farm

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Ohio Farm

Preț: 189.91 lei

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Notă biografică

Extras

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Preț: 189^.91 lei