For the past several weeks we have been on the subject of Wisconsin's family farms, and how these individual units pulled through the Great Depression. My friend Ken was born in 1924 on such a farm about 40 miles north of Green Bay. The third oldest in a family with 10 children, Ken learned at a young age how to share and how to "live without." He remembers the mid- to late-1930s as a time of national and international turmoil, which they certainly were: During this time Hitler was rising to power, newspapers carried news of the Dillinger gang and "Baby Face" Nelson, and Lindbergh's baby had been kidnapped. "If anyone was murdered you'd read about it in the newspaper," Ken recalls.
However dark the 1930s may be portrayed, there was a lighter, more innocent side to life on Wisconsin's family farms - particularly the one 40 miles north of Green Bay. In fact, growing up on a family farm for Ken remains one of his utmost memories: "It was the greatest adventure of my life!" Since his was a dairy farm, there was perpetual work to keep the children employed. By age 6, Ken and his brothers were delegated to the task of milking the family's 30-head herd of cows. Ken's mother kept a coop with 500 chickens, and if all else failed there was an endless field of green beans to pick through.
Given that Ken's family was abundant in the form of human resources, it was common for neighbors to hire out the children. As Ken remembers, the kids would help out the neighbors with their chores. No payment ever was necessary, other than perhaps a nickel or dime, which always was brought home to Ken's parents.
During the Depression, the WPA System hired Ken's father for two months - he had a team of horses and an implement called a "slusher." A slusher would hold about a half-yard of dirt, and could be used for digging, trenching and moving soil. Ken's dad was charged with the task of removing the weak areas of swamps, as well as loading gravel onto farmers' wagons. These farmers then would use the gravel to maintain the roads themselves.
In conjunction with the slusher, Ken's dad also had a thresh machine - an operation that kept him busy throughout the late summer and early fall. As Ken explained, only one in every 20 to 30 farmers would have a thresh machine. Thus, the thresher would move from farm to farm with a permanent team doing custom work for the area farmers. A neighbor provided the silo filler, and was paid at a rate of $1 per foot when filling silos. Ken's dad serviced quite a large area with his operation, sometimes traveling as far as 22 miles to thresh! He would do his own work, then the immediate neighbors, and finally move throughout the area to whomever hired him. Ken's dad hired a crew of seven whose job it was to pitch bundles and take care of the grain. Their goal for each day was to thresh 2,000 bushels! "If they did that, Dad would buy them each a pony of beer at night; that was their reward for doing 2,000 bushels," Ken remembers. The threshing operation kept Ken's dad on the road almost constantly during the fall. "Sometimes he would leave in August and not get back until October." During the time Ken's dad was threshing, the kids stayed home to milk and do chores - and pick a never-ending supply of green beans.
In addition to cows, chickens, a slusher and thresher, the family farm 40 miles north of Green Bay grew a reliable crop of green beans. Although the patch was only about two acres, to Ken it seemed like 10. "We'd have to go through that patch a half-dozen times; we were forever picking beans!"
While Father was away, Ken and his siblings picked beans - all day long. Mother was the boss for this task, and only the best beans were acceptable. They'd wait for the vines to dry, and as Ken described, "[The vines] would rust when they were wet." In the evening, Ken's dad came home with the car, to take the beans to the canning factory. Here, the beans were graded, hence the emphasis on quality - Ken's parents always tried to get the top-graded beans. The economical challenge of the Great Depression affected even Ken's never-ending bean saga, "I remember one year we got $700 for all the beans we had picked. Dad took the check and paid his taxes - that's all the money covered, just the taxes."
In fact, the family consumed more food than what the raw ingredients were valued at market price. With eight brothers and one sister, Ken's family ate more cheese and butter in winter than what the milk paid for. Many neighbors simply dried off their herd of cows; it was too expensive and too bothersome to produce the milk for the price they were receiving.
Other commodities were delegated solely to one purpose. With 500 chickens, there always were eggs to be collected - and sold. The income from the eggs was sufficient to provide the family with groceries, a job delegated to Ken and his siblings. As he recalls, "Ma sold eggs to buy groceries. When Dad was gone, us kids would take two or three-dozen eggs to town in crates to the store. Ma had a grocery list that we'd take that had every last item - right down to the penny. We'd just show the list to the grocer and she'd fill the order - we kids never touched anything in the store. Often we'd get a bag of candy as kind of a reward for the walk home. We carried those groceries two miles all the way home across the field - can you imagine that?"
To that memory Ken smiled, "What an experience."
- Dan Wegmueller of Monroe writes
a weekly column for Friday editions of
the Times. He can be reached
at dwegs@tds.net.
However dark the 1930s may be portrayed, there was a lighter, more innocent side to life on Wisconsin's family farms - particularly the one 40 miles north of Green Bay. In fact, growing up on a family farm for Ken remains one of his utmost memories: "It was the greatest adventure of my life!" Since his was a dairy farm, there was perpetual work to keep the children employed. By age 6, Ken and his brothers were delegated to the task of milking the family's 30-head herd of cows. Ken's mother kept a coop with 500 chickens, and if all else failed there was an endless field of green beans to pick through.
Given that Ken's family was abundant in the form of human resources, it was common for neighbors to hire out the children. As Ken remembers, the kids would help out the neighbors with their chores. No payment ever was necessary, other than perhaps a nickel or dime, which always was brought home to Ken's parents.
During the Depression, the WPA System hired Ken's father for two months - he had a team of horses and an implement called a "slusher." A slusher would hold about a half-yard of dirt, and could be used for digging, trenching and moving soil. Ken's dad was charged with the task of removing the weak areas of swamps, as well as loading gravel onto farmers' wagons. These farmers then would use the gravel to maintain the roads themselves.
In conjunction with the slusher, Ken's dad also had a thresh machine - an operation that kept him busy throughout the late summer and early fall. As Ken explained, only one in every 20 to 30 farmers would have a thresh machine. Thus, the thresher would move from farm to farm with a permanent team doing custom work for the area farmers. A neighbor provided the silo filler, and was paid at a rate of $1 per foot when filling silos. Ken's dad serviced quite a large area with his operation, sometimes traveling as far as 22 miles to thresh! He would do his own work, then the immediate neighbors, and finally move throughout the area to whomever hired him. Ken's dad hired a crew of seven whose job it was to pitch bundles and take care of the grain. Their goal for each day was to thresh 2,000 bushels! "If they did that, Dad would buy them each a pony of beer at night; that was their reward for doing 2,000 bushels," Ken remembers. The threshing operation kept Ken's dad on the road almost constantly during the fall. "Sometimes he would leave in August and not get back until October." During the time Ken's dad was threshing, the kids stayed home to milk and do chores - and pick a never-ending supply of green beans.
In addition to cows, chickens, a slusher and thresher, the family farm 40 miles north of Green Bay grew a reliable crop of green beans. Although the patch was only about two acres, to Ken it seemed like 10. "We'd have to go through that patch a half-dozen times; we were forever picking beans!"
While Father was away, Ken and his siblings picked beans - all day long. Mother was the boss for this task, and only the best beans were acceptable. They'd wait for the vines to dry, and as Ken described, "[The vines] would rust when they were wet." In the evening, Ken's dad came home with the car, to take the beans to the canning factory. Here, the beans were graded, hence the emphasis on quality - Ken's parents always tried to get the top-graded beans. The economical challenge of the Great Depression affected even Ken's never-ending bean saga, "I remember one year we got $700 for all the beans we had picked. Dad took the check and paid his taxes - that's all the money covered, just the taxes."
In fact, the family consumed more food than what the raw ingredients were valued at market price. With eight brothers and one sister, Ken's family ate more cheese and butter in winter than what the milk paid for. Many neighbors simply dried off their herd of cows; it was too expensive and too bothersome to produce the milk for the price they were receiving.
Other commodities were delegated solely to one purpose. With 500 chickens, there always were eggs to be collected - and sold. The income from the eggs was sufficient to provide the family with groceries, a job delegated to Ken and his siblings. As he recalls, "Ma sold eggs to buy groceries. When Dad was gone, us kids would take two or three-dozen eggs to town in crates to the store. Ma had a grocery list that we'd take that had every last item - right down to the penny. We'd just show the list to the grocer and she'd fill the order - we kids never touched anything in the store. Often we'd get a bag of candy as kind of a reward for the walk home. We carried those groceries two miles all the way home across the field - can you imagine that?"
To that memory Ken smiled, "What an experience."
- Dan Wegmueller of Monroe writes
a weekly column for Friday editions of
the Times. He can be reached
at dwegs@tds.net.
