Last week we introduced the Wisconsin family farms of the 1930s and how they pulled through the Great Depression. There is a reason the small family farms of Wisconsin succeeded during the country's worst economical crisis of the century: each individual unit was largely self-sufficient. This was a time when a growing family needed but a "weekly" trip for groceries. Aside from 50-pound bulk bags of flour and sugar, the 1930s farm provided a growing family with all they required.
My friend Carol was born in 1923 on a farm outside Winslow, Ill. Carol grew up with three sisters - her brother died at six months of pneumonia. She remembers her childhood, and the bounty associated with living off the land. With a family of six, no running water, and no electricity, daily hand chores were the norm for children like Carol. The kids chipped in each evening after dinner by doing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and sweeping the floor - certainly, there were no vacuum cleaners! In fact, Carol's house did not get electricity until 1939, and what a profound innovation that proved to be. She laughed at the joy of having electric lights, "That was a fun time when they turned on the electricity because the whole neighborhood was wired, and we'd go around the house turning on the lights - the whole neighborhood would light up and we'd have to go around and turn everything off!" Electricity was a big deal, and proved to be a status symbol for the farms and rural towns. My Uncle Daryl described turning on all the lights - "It was a big deal when you got electricity!"
Although a quarter of the American work force was jobless during the 1930s, the family farms provided a steady supply of work. Most of my friends recall having a "hired man" around the farm to lend a hand with the daily chores, and although Carol's farm had about 20 cows, all milked by hand, the sisters rarely had to help, "I milked a couple cows, but never really had to be there. We usually had a hired man."
Another common feature of the family farm of the 1930s was diversification. Carol's farm had a "Team of horses, and we raised pigs. [We also] had chickens - we'd get them when they were real little and I suppose we had a couple hundred." One of Carol's jobs was to count eggs each evening, and special wooden boxes were delegated to the task.
It seems to me that farm families during the Great Depression were extremely self-sufficient. As my grandmother wrote, "We never went hungry. We always had enough to eat." Many of you have first-hand experience on the logistics of feeding a family, and how quickly that grocery bill can add up. Considering that a Depression-era family of six could be cared for by one weekly trip to the grocery store, I asked Carol the types of food they would grow on her childhood farm:
Of course we always kept a garden with vegetables. My mother had current and gooseberry bushes, which she used to make jam. I can remember one year from our house to the corner of the road we had black raspberries; just rows and rows, I don't remember how many! We had strawberries and apple trees; there was always a lot of canning, and sweet corn! When it was ready us kids had to bring it in from the field and husk it. My mother set a table in the yard where we'd cut the corn off the cob and dry it. I don't know if people do it like that anymore, but I remember it had a different taste. The corn was put it in bags and then Mom would cook it. We didn't have a smokehouse but my grandparents' neighbors had a smokehouse. We'd butcher our own hogs and beef - I always wanted to be there when Dad butchered but I was always in school. Grandma would come up for butcher day and she'd make liver sausage, headcheese, and would clean the stomachs for neighbors - they liked to eat the stomachs. We made our own sausage; we scraped the casings from the pig and used a sausage stuffer that filled them right up. There was always a lot of canning - Mom had a canner that you could use to fill tin cans, and she always had canned meat. We also bought peaches in bushels and had canned peaches. The only things we bought from the grocer were flour and sugar; we had everything else. Our milk went to the cheese factory, and it was hauled with a spring wagon and team of horses. Later Dad bought a Model A pickup and then a car. Saturday night was when we'd go to Monroe to get groceries, which was always a big deal.
Farms during this time used everything and anything. As my grandmother wrote, "We were taught to be grateful for the simplest things." Organs that by today's standards seem repulsive would never have been tossed. Pig intestines were scraped and used for sausage casings, and stomachs were stuffed and served as tripe. Daryl specifically remembers his mother boiling a pig's head for headcheese, which, believe it or not, emitted a foul odor.
During the 1930s, the farm families of Wisconsin certainly were poor, and times were tight. Nobody had any money, which brings to mind one specific story of Carol's childhood. She was given a dollar - a whole dollar. On her way to town she dropped the money and lost it, thereby receiving a firm lecture from her father. This was at a time when a dollar could buy five gallons of gasoline or five admissions to a double-feature picture show. So valuable was the dollar that Carol's sister retraced her steps and actually found the cash!
After all, in the words of Carol's father, "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"
- Dan Wegmueller of Monroe writes
a weekly column for Friday editions of
the Times. He can be reached
at dwegs@tds.net.
My friend Carol was born in 1923 on a farm outside Winslow, Ill. Carol grew up with three sisters - her brother died at six months of pneumonia. She remembers her childhood, and the bounty associated with living off the land. With a family of six, no running water, and no electricity, daily hand chores were the norm for children like Carol. The kids chipped in each evening after dinner by doing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and sweeping the floor - certainly, there were no vacuum cleaners! In fact, Carol's house did not get electricity until 1939, and what a profound innovation that proved to be. She laughed at the joy of having electric lights, "That was a fun time when they turned on the electricity because the whole neighborhood was wired, and we'd go around the house turning on the lights - the whole neighborhood would light up and we'd have to go around and turn everything off!" Electricity was a big deal, and proved to be a status symbol for the farms and rural towns. My Uncle Daryl described turning on all the lights - "It was a big deal when you got electricity!"
Although a quarter of the American work force was jobless during the 1930s, the family farms provided a steady supply of work. Most of my friends recall having a "hired man" around the farm to lend a hand with the daily chores, and although Carol's farm had about 20 cows, all milked by hand, the sisters rarely had to help, "I milked a couple cows, but never really had to be there. We usually had a hired man."
Another common feature of the family farm of the 1930s was diversification. Carol's farm had a "Team of horses, and we raised pigs. [We also] had chickens - we'd get them when they were real little and I suppose we had a couple hundred." One of Carol's jobs was to count eggs each evening, and special wooden boxes were delegated to the task.
It seems to me that farm families during the Great Depression were extremely self-sufficient. As my grandmother wrote, "We never went hungry. We always had enough to eat." Many of you have first-hand experience on the logistics of feeding a family, and how quickly that grocery bill can add up. Considering that a Depression-era family of six could be cared for by one weekly trip to the grocery store, I asked Carol the types of food they would grow on her childhood farm:
Of course we always kept a garden with vegetables. My mother had current and gooseberry bushes, which she used to make jam. I can remember one year from our house to the corner of the road we had black raspberries; just rows and rows, I don't remember how many! We had strawberries and apple trees; there was always a lot of canning, and sweet corn! When it was ready us kids had to bring it in from the field and husk it. My mother set a table in the yard where we'd cut the corn off the cob and dry it. I don't know if people do it like that anymore, but I remember it had a different taste. The corn was put it in bags and then Mom would cook it. We didn't have a smokehouse but my grandparents' neighbors had a smokehouse. We'd butcher our own hogs and beef - I always wanted to be there when Dad butchered but I was always in school. Grandma would come up for butcher day and she'd make liver sausage, headcheese, and would clean the stomachs for neighbors - they liked to eat the stomachs. We made our own sausage; we scraped the casings from the pig and used a sausage stuffer that filled them right up. There was always a lot of canning - Mom had a canner that you could use to fill tin cans, and she always had canned meat. We also bought peaches in bushels and had canned peaches. The only things we bought from the grocer were flour and sugar; we had everything else. Our milk went to the cheese factory, and it was hauled with a spring wagon and team of horses. Later Dad bought a Model A pickup and then a car. Saturday night was when we'd go to Monroe to get groceries, which was always a big deal.
Farms during this time used everything and anything. As my grandmother wrote, "We were taught to be grateful for the simplest things." Organs that by today's standards seem repulsive would never have been tossed. Pig intestines were scraped and used for sausage casings, and stomachs were stuffed and served as tripe. Daryl specifically remembers his mother boiling a pig's head for headcheese, which, believe it or not, emitted a foul odor.
During the 1930s, the farm families of Wisconsin certainly were poor, and times were tight. Nobody had any money, which brings to mind one specific story of Carol's childhood. She was given a dollar - a whole dollar. On her way to town she dropped the money and lost it, thereby receiving a firm lecture from her father. This was at a time when a dollar could buy five gallons of gasoline or five admissions to a double-feature picture show. So valuable was the dollar that Carol's sister retraced her steps and actually found the cash!
After all, in the words of Carol's father, "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"
- Dan Wegmueller of Monroe writes
a weekly column for Friday editions of
the Times. He can be reached
at dwegs@tds.net.
