Farm Life

FARM LIVING

Farm Living is the life for me

By Joe Towe

I was a lucky kid 🙃
growing up on Grandpa's farm.


Farm living

Hi, my name is Joe. Let me tell you about farm living.
On the farm, we grew our own food in the garden.

Grandma and Grandpa have a farm. There is always something to do on the farm year-round.



They raised me, and I learned from their wisdom. Self-sufficient, the farm provided everything needed to survive and live.

Instead of going to the grocery store, we went to the barn, the hen house, and the garden.

I would try to help, and I remember Grandpa getting aggravated with my constant questions. I couldn’t understand why until he explained and gave me some of the wisest advice I would ever get, He said, “Joseph, you can't say everything that pops into your head or you’ll drive people crazy, You have to be quiet and listen , then think about what you want to say and how you’re going to say it in a smart way. Now, this may take a while, but then when you talk, people will be more out to take you seriously.” So that’s what I did, and I could tell he was quite pleased, didn’t mind as much answering my questions, and seemed surprised that I would usually ask smart questions.

They had a wood cookstove in the kitchen. We would build a fire in the fire box to get the stove hot. Then you could cook on top or bake in the oven.
Mama got us a small place nearby, as I explored it for the first time. I saw the stove, carefully studied it. It confused me; finally, I had to ask, “Where does the wood go?”
Mama explained that it was an electric stove. This little bitty wire that plugged into the wall made it work and would get it hot.




I said, “that’s the darndest thing I ever heard. I just don’t think it’ll work. It's got to have a fire to get hot, right?”

In the mornings, I would go with Grandma. First, she would milk the cow and then gather eggs from the hen house.

She had a little stool she set on to milk the cow. A metal bucket she would squirt the milk into.

Underneath the cow, between its front and back legs, were its udders. Grandma would grab two of them, one with each hand, and start pulling back and forth. Milk squirted out each time she pulled. It wouldn't take long for her to fill up the metal bucket. She made me try and said I was way too slow. I didn't much like it anyway. Sometimes, when I would smart off to her, she would squirt me with the milk.

Back in the kitchen, she would slowly pour (strain) the milk through a white cloth into a big glass jar. The thicker white stuff that didn’t go through the cloth was cream. There wasn’t as much cream, so she would save it until she had enough to make butter. I never figured out exactly how that worked. but she would pour the cream into this small wooden barrel, then put the lid on, which had what looked like a broom handle coming out of it. We would pull that broom handle up and down for an hour or so, and out would come the best tasting butter there was.
She would let me work the handle while she cooked with big, heavy black cast iron pans on the wood cookstove. Then we would eat the bestest, biggest fresh butter biscuits that I’ve ever seen. Somehow, she also made buttermilk that she used for cooking.

We would go to the henhouse to gather eggs. Sometimes, a stubborn hen would try to hide her eggs. And we would have to find them because if we didn't, we would have a bunch of baby chickens, or, as Grandma would say, witty's. Grandma would let them have Witty's at times when she needed more chickens.

She would sell chickens, too. Usually, one of the neighbors or someone she knew would put in an order.
I was good at finding hidden eggs from those stubborn chickens. If I couldn’t find them pretty quick, I would watch the stubborn hen to see where she would sneak off to. That's where her eggs would be.
Sometimes I would watch Mama Cat when she had kittens. She would try to hide them

so that nothing or no one could get to them, but if we couldn’t catch them when they were small, they would be harder to catch and get wild.
I was good at finding lost things too; I was small enough to get places no one else could. Grandma said I was always "plundering," but when she would lose or misplace something,. She would holler for me to come find it for her.

One time, a skunk was getting into the eggs at night. So Granma set up some big metal traps to catch whatever was stealing her eggs. She caught a skunk, but it was still alive, with one front foot caught in the trap. It was trapped and mad, if we got anywhere close, it would start spraying a fifteen foot stream of the grossest smelling stuff toward us. The darndest thing, Grandpa had to get out his gun, and that was the end of that.

In the spring, they would start plowing and fertilizing to get the gardens ready for the planting season. First to produce was Grandma’s strawberry patch. She would start tending it early. In the middle of May, it would produce beautiful, juicy strawberries.

I would help, but when they got ripe, I probably ate more than I picked for her. What we didn’t eat or sell she would freeze, and we ate strawberries until they were ripe again the next year.
I would help plant the garden, it was fun. We had to keep a close eye on everything we planted, day by day. If we missed a day, the weeds would try to take over.

Grandpa plowed with his tractor. Making rows with the dirt loose and easy to work. Then we planted seeds. Corn and green beans were planted together so the beans would wrap around the tall corn, making them easier to pick.

The cucumbers, tomatoes, green peas, potatoes, carrots, turnips, lettuce, watermelon, pumpkins, and some other things were planted in rows by themselves.

Everything was so good. Especially when you first picked it. What they didn’t eat or sell would be frozen or canned to last us during the cold winter. Nothing was ever wasted.
Shortly after the strawberries were gone, came the purple grapes.

Grapes would start getting ripe. One of the grapevines was beside a tall walnut tree, and the vine went up into the tree. There were plenty of grapes, but the best couldn’t be reached unless you could climb the tree. I learned to climb trees really fast. It was the greatest treat. I could get the best of grapes, apples, peaches, and anything else that grew.

After a while, after the purple grapes were gone, the big green grapes would get ripe. Everything ripened at different times. The best I remember is that the order went kind of like this, strawberries, early green apples, purple grapes, early red apples, early peaches, green grapes, pears, red cherries, yellow apples, and more peaches and apples, big dark cherries, and finally the late apples and peaches, not to mention the walnuts, chestnuts, and persimmons, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and figs. I know there were more fruits and berries I don’t remember as well, probably because I didn’t like them as well. There was always something new to eat.

Apples would get ripe at different times, so we always had fresh apples. Grandma made the best fried apples you’d ever eat. Sometimes we had them with every meal. In the fall, they would peel and slice the apples, then put them outside on huge tables with tin tops, and the sun would eventually dry them enough to become dried apples to make pies and sauces. Dried apples would last most of the winter. They had a cold room that would keep things.