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We were driving through the high country last week when I saw a stock pond covered with ice. And I think I caught a glimpse of my father in his second childhood. My parents migrated to Idaho long ago from North Dakota where winter ice was plentiful and where ice skating was sometimes a part of a farm kid’s life. On slow days when the fields were frozen solid, farm families had fun for a change. In warmer months, they might play baseball on summer weekends or fish a bit in a nearby stream. But mostly they got their exercise the old-fashioned way - drudgery/Bill Hall, Lewiston Tribune. More here.
Question: How many generations do you have to go back before you find a relative who earned a living off the land by farming, ranching, dairying, or some other means?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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moscow_minidoka on February 23 at 11:06 a.m.
My parents. And all generations before them.
Bigguy on February 23 at 11:11 a.m.
Me - until I couldn’t afford it any longer.
JeanieSpokane on February 23 at 11:28 a.m.
Two - my grandfather raised cattle in Jerome, Idaho. I loved to visit him. This was his second job. He was the post master for Jerome and when I visited, I would go with him. He was the mailman, too, and we would drive around in his very old pickup truck, passing out the mail. Because it was a very small town, the newspaper had announced my arrival (I was nine) and every stop, women would come out with a couple cookies for me and Granddad. When we were done delivering the mail, we found a little pond and sat at the end of the dock and ate a gazillion cookies!
DFO on February 23 at 11:29 a.m.
My father made his living as a dairyman. He ran his own dairy in Sacramento for five years before becoming my uncle’s foreman on a dairy with 500 cows. I grew up on Uncle Manuel’s dairy. At age 14, I was mowing, raking & hauling hay in my uncle’s fields, which lined the Sacramento River in northern California. I wished I had $20 for every time he told me: “I’m making my living with my muscles, but you’ll have to make your living with your brains.” He didn’t graduate from 8th grade. But he had a head for numbers. He was the foreman of a trucking company in Manteca, Calif., and in the process of buying in as a partner when he was killed in a traffic accident. I inherited neither his head for numbers nor his mechanical ability. But I think he’d be OK with how things turned out for me.
JeanieSpokane on February 23 at 11:36 a.m.
“But I think he’d be OK with how things turned out for me.”
That would be a good thread, DFO. “What would (or do) your parents think of your life choices and career today?” (I remember crying on my mother’s shoulder when I was about 35, over something bad that happened, and her remark was (sad to me, today) “why don’t children ever grow up?” I think she would finally be proud of how I turned out.)
JohnA on February 23 at 11:49 a.m.
I’m reminded of the farmer after he won the lottery. He was asked what he was going to do with the millions he won. He said, “Oh, I reckon I’ll just keep on a-farmin’ ‘til it’s all gone”. :)
marmitetoasty on February 23 at 1:18 p.m.
On me tosser X’s side of the family via me lads, they had been in the plant nursery business for years, but on me X’s birth certificate (I still cant believe he was born and not hatched from some egg in a cave) it reads under the bit where it says ‘fathers occupation’ …… ‘Head Herdsman’……. :) I always thought me MIL was a bit of an old cow ;) - the little head herdsman cottage still stands next to the BIG FARM down Sheepwash lane… about a mile from where I live….
On my side of the family, they was all railway men…. my father grew up in the railway cottages at Hilsea….. and me Grandfather (me fathers father) was a train driver and died in a head on collision outside Littlehampton when I was about 3 or 4 so probably in 1960… and me mothers father died whilst working on the railways, I think he got run over by a goods train…. but I never knew him…. so never really knew either of me grandfathers, and oh my how history repeats, cos me lads dont have grandfathers in their lives either…. even though one is still alive and kicking….
But I do know that in my depths of me soul, I would love to make a living, be it just to survive, off of the land…… but will have to make do with me chickens in me garden and me little veggie plot LOL
I knew I should of married a farmer and not a bloody nurseryman LOL
x
JohnA on February 23 at 3:39 p.m.
Darn it, Marnie. Every time I read one of your posts I end up talking with a Cockney accent the rest of the day!
And, I have to be careful. If I mistakingly say “Aye, dearie, where’s me dinner?” one more time I’ll likely be wearing it. :)