Farm Life

Although separate dates enclose the lives of Duncan and Violet Campbell, there are special experiences which they shared that should have a special telling. Now is the time again for my metaphor of the river which separate and unites all parts.

Life for Violet, as life for Father, went from one of ease to one of constant work, from city to farm. The life of a farmer's wife was difficult before electricity lent a helping hand. Dad always tried to lift the burden by making certain that water was available in the kitchen which meant a pump and a sink with the water drawn from a well or a cistern. What is a cistern? It must have been civilized man's first attempt to catch and hold rain-water for family use, out of the reach of mosquitoes and their larva. Ours, at Clarkston, consisted of a room-sized area, cement-blocked and water-proofed to hold rainwater, never used for drinking or for cooking but, oh, it was so delightfully soft for all washing.

To be sure most other chores were drudgery. The kitchen range heated the water for laundry. With the sad irons (the name describes them accurately) one ironed and propriety ordained that everything should be ironed. The food for meals took time and care to prepare. The larger and newer kitchen ranges had helpful features which earlier ones lacked - the reservoir which kept warm water continually on hand, the far right hand top of the range was the perfect spot to temper the heat for rising bread, to keep long-cooking meals on a slow simmer, the warming oven drew minimal warmth from the stove pipe and was helpful if pressing chores kept a worker from prompt reply to the dinner bell. You just had to know how to use each part. Toilets - there were none other than the little house with a path; c-o-l-d in the winter time but it required cleaning only once a year; when the little room was beyond further use, it was moved and an apple tree planted in the accumulation of fertilizer. Baths occurred on Saturday nights; the rest of the week - well you imagine. There was something called a 'tea-cup bath' intended to clean only the essentials. Mother tells of the time that she had almost finished the family wash - including the hired-hand's - changed her own clothes from the skin out, washed those that she had taken off so that everything would be clean, picked up the large tub of used wash water in order to carry it out and dump it. Just outside the door she slipped on a bit of ice and went down. The tub of luke-warm well-used laundry water spilling over her freshly cleaned self. By the way, Mother could wring out a sheet (this was before the days of hand-cranked wringers); that required strength; she never was big enough to ....Life was one unending challenge. There was also the tale of the farmhand who donned his long johns in the fall, took them off and buried them with the first spring plowing.

I recall a porch which went around the Clarkston house. There are snap shots of Mother and visitors sitting there; later snapshots put my memory in question. No matter from where the sun shone or rains fell, there was always a spot on that porch which was protected. Visitors came for week long vacations. The MacKay sisters came for a look at farm life, they being city dwellers, and to see the only child whom they knew. They were there on my fourth Christmas for I recall two of them walking me down to the mailbox to find there a package for Ivabell with a child's piano in it. Frequent guests were Aunt Florence and Uncle Lloyd with a cousin for me and whomever else they could persuade to share a vacation. I wonder if anyone ever asked Mother if a visit of four to six people was convenient. Visitors were welcome and they were always willing to share in whatever work was to be done, whatever work was in season, or to sit on the porch and crack hickory nuts on the sad iron which did double duty a nutcracker.

The hired man at Clarkston was Waldo. I remember him as a big man but then, when I was small, even my little Mother was tall. Waldo came to visit after we had moved back to Detroit. Serendipity for Waldo and for me was his finding a box of ice-cream cones which had fallen from a delivery truck (Wagon? But there were cars on the streets of Detroit then.) and bringing them to us. I would take a cone to the corner store, buy ice-cream to be put into my cone and then wonder just how the grocer managed to get that ice cream all the way to the bottom. I still wonder but now I wonder how many children wonder the same thing.

When a farmer's barn burns, that is a catastrophe; when the house burns the loss is not so great. It is still a serious matter. After noon meal one day, Mother, settling down to a short rest and some crocheting, sent me to her room for a ball of thread. I, who had to go through the parlor, opened the door and saw a wall of flame surrounding the stove and reaching the ceiling. Mother rang the dinner bell which would call Dad and the hired hand to the house and then sent me off to tell the neighbors that help was needed. My four-year old legs hurried down the hill toward the gate. I had to pass the barn where the Jersey bull was kept. I was more frightened by the fire than by the bull. The neighbor woman saw me coming and alerted her men and sent them up to Campbell's. They found out what the problem was. Today when there is a fire in a house, it often burns to the ground, people and all. One of the men went up to the roof; Father took the spot in the second story bedroom where the stove pipe passed through ceiling and floor on its way to the roof; one manned the cistern pump in the kitchen; there were others who carted and carried that precious water. They put the fire out - and that house was a huge old rambling affair built of wood. That is why I still recognize the smell of a burning house when ever and where ever there is such smoke about. Some where in the back of my memory is the thought that there was an extra flight of stairs from first to second floor, plus the one to the basement, plus the one to the attic; it was a huge old rambling house built by the son of a lumber baron - there is no one to verify my memory and that house burnt years ago. Memory still harbors fear of fires.

The Plymouth farm house did not have the luxury of an encircling porch. But there were other attractions, both convenient and inconvenient. Meals for visitors were always large and basic; no one complained; then farm meals were always large and no one grew fat. All meals were exceptional when the threshers came - the threshers were the men who owned and rented out their machines and their time to harvest the grain. The neighbors often brought their own horses and wagons knowing that most farms had a limited supply of horse power. As with a barn raising, everyone came to help and their insurance was help in return when their turn to harvest came. Eighteen to twenty hungry men would stampeded the house at noon. Meanwhile their wives had come to share the work with the housewife. Every bit of china, flatware and glass had been taken from the cupboards and prepared for use; that was a good substitute for spring house cleaning. Tables were stretched to their limits and set with hearty food; there were liberal amounts of dessert. It was a even exchange: the farmer needed the willing work of the men and the men needed the bountiful food provided by the housewives to replenish the strength and energy which had been drained out of them by hard work and heat. It is one of the rules of Mother Nature that threshing only happens in the middle of the hot dry days of summer. When summer days are damp and cool, every one worries for damp hay can be the cause of spontaneous combustion and the burning of a barn.

As any good Canadian farmer can tell you, you judge the quality of a farm and the farmer by the size of the barns in relationship to the house; these days the huge and expensive silos overshadow all else. The barns at Plymouth were large and many. It was possible to drive horses with a load of hay into the center of the main barn. That load of hay had been carefully separated with rope slings into loads of the right size for the ropes and pulleys in the barn to move the hay from wagon to mow. There had to be room to hold the hay which would feed all of the large animals for a long winter; and, if possible, some to boot. To either side of that center passage, the barn stretched large. It was big enough to house five horses, stanchions for more than a dozen cows and the bull. On one side, the barn extended to cover scales large enough to weigh a team of horses and a wagon full of whatever the harvest. Farmers came often with their loads to weigh; they came to breed their cows. Dad hand milked his Holsteins, all registered. Dad tried a milking machine for he figured only the 'best for the best'; the machines were not satisfactory. The milk was taken to and sold at a depot in Plymouth - good milk cooled by the waters which the windmill drew from deep in the earth. The opposite end of the barn stretched under the hay lofts and beyond the grain bins to cover buggies, sleigh, and the smaller farm implements. One barn was used only to house the larger farm implements (hay-loaders, hay-rakes, grain drills etc.), and to give protection to the farmer as he worked on repairs during the off season. There was a double corn-crib with its own space for a wagon. Pigs were housed in another barn; two smaller barns were for chickens. I know that my Father had some seven hundred laying hens; it was my job to gather the eggs every day. Maybe that accounts for my not being too fond of eggs. A second small brood house was used to house each spring's fresh delivery of chicks. You have missed one of the signs of spring if you have not heard, in the post-office, the chirping of several hundred downy chicks. Just as my Father had Holstein cows for the great quantity of milk, Dad kept Leghorn hens for the dozens of eggs which they produced. Some people complain about the quality of milk or eggs when they do not rely for their income upon the quantity which is produced . It is the variety of foods fed these animal that makes a difference in the quality of their product. There was a shed which doubled as woodshed and as garage for the Ford. The house, planned to accommodate two families for it was anticipated that a hired hand might be married, had been extended to include a kitchen, separate from the room which had once been the kitchen and dining room, plus a shed for doing winter repairs while the attic above stored the fall's crop of nuts. That was a farm of size and the work equaled the numbers of animals and machines, the extent of the land. Day began at five o'clock and ended exhausted.

Of course the housewife was involved in the management of such a farm. Although Mother did little of the actual farm work, one need not be immediately involved to have the responsibilities of any farm activity take over portions of one's days. When she needed meat or eggs, the chickens were there; when she needed milk, the cows supplied; when water was a necessity, the windmill answered her need. The farmer and his wife are skilled in many ways; the wiser ones rely upon the local land-grant college which will share with them any special knowledge the college may have and will explore with them the problems of husbandry, find the solutions and help whenever possible. Father and Mother both used MSU which was so funded that it could send out people to instruct; the farmers, men and women, took advantage of all of the offerings both for practical and for social reasons. But the college could do nothing for the farmer's daughter who could not tell the difference between a weed and a proper plant and so lost her job as weed-puller. I was not old nor sophisticated enough to have done that on purpose. Could that have been the source of my remark to the Committee for the Restoration of the Frank-Lloyd Affleck House: All weeds when kept cut two inches high are called grass.

The house at Plymouth was unusual, large farmhouse, well-built with the materials available at that time. I was fascinated by the huge blocks of Canadian granite which made the foundation; all above was brick. Rooms in this house were large, especially from my point of view; many were larger than usual for whole walls had been knocked out leaving their marks upon the ceilings - and, of, course, the ceilings were high for that contributed to the summer's comfort. It also compounded the winter's problems. Dad had that in mind when he installed a furnace in the basement - a huge Buddha that sat below the dining room and warmed some of the house. It was the lower floor which was directly warmed; registers, in the floors of the rooms above, allowed the heat to rise and warm the bedrooms. I took advantage of that rising heat whenever I had a toothache. Toothaches? They are for the old to remember and for the very poor to have. Children in today's society see the dentist and are urged to brush regularly; some things have improved. One considered when the house was built and with what materials; every window frame and every door jamb had warped with time. As winter began to blow in, Mother chinked all cracks with old rags and folded paper; that was basic insulation and it helped. I recall one storm with winds of seventy miles an hour which blew Mother's starched lace curtains straight out parallel with the ceiling. Now is time to appreciate polyester which needs no starching, no stretching. Although we never broke the ice on wash water as Father had, there were times when the cold crept into the bones and the body shook. I remember the patterns which Jack Frost made upon the windows, using the kitchen steam as medium. Always beautiful, all ways. The basement in the house was built for a large farm, but built, as things were then with no thought of cupboard or closet; you made do. A large board, suspended by a wire at either end, kept whatever from the mice; with grain in the barn and scattered for the chickens, there were always mice and every farmwife struggled to defeat them. No Michigan basement this one for floor and all sides were properly cemented (A Michigan basement? It has a proper floor but the sides are earth. Why? I don't know.). Two large potato bins held the family's needs for the winter with the balance of the harvest to sell; long boards stretched from steps to the base of the potato bins and on them Dad stored the cases of eggs before each trip to market. Basement door stood open one time and young Laurencelle took advantage, walked out upon the boards and threw eggs down to the floor - finally some one found him having fun with his new sport. There was much, so much of every-thing and so much to do; that farm was bountiful.

I recall playing with friends in the great barn. We were racing along the beams, broad, hand made of the adzed trunks of maple trees, beams which every sling of hay, every forkful of cattle food had polished until they gleamed as the most polished floor can gleam. I slipped; I fell to the barn floor with a scattering of hay on top of me; I lost my breath. Probably I fell no more than ten or twelve feet for below that beam were grain bins. The playmates panicked, listened to me gasp, and walked me towards the house. I wonder if any of the women there would have known how to restore breath to empty lungs. Probably not; I have often felt concern for the football player who, at point of contact, had the wind knocked out of him. Obviously, I started breathing.

Every housewife had her methods and her means. Farming was a demanding taskmaster. The wife in her house would become frustrated. Mother, provoked, would stop talking; a week of silence was as much as a family could stand. Even Mother had her limits. Then another womanly device was to shift the furniture; it could always be called house-cleaning. Often it was simply working off frustration with the eternal sameness of life. There was one week when Mother daily moved the piano from wall to wall in the parlor. I looked every evening to find it so that I could practice. Mother was a little woman and that was a big piano.

The two family provisions in the Plymouth house proved necessary. Mother’s sister Mabel, her husband and three daughters came to live with us for a while. That meant that I had three small playmates always at hand. It meant more work for Mother and some stress for my Father for Roy Lewis, definitely, was not a farmer. That was the summer that Laurencelle, my brother, and Maybelle, our cousin, were born. Again a college's services, this time the U. of M., were very important for some difficulties developed in the matter of feeding Maybelle. After the baby's diet problems were cared for and the infant well established, the Lewis family returned to city life which was the natural situation for them.

Farm life never lasted very long for us. WWI sold the Clarkston farm; Dad fell in a barn and seriously injured his back; that fall sold the Plymouth farm. Dad was never able to return to his beloved farming.

Why do I dwell so long upon farm life when it was really such a small part of our lives? So many of my memories, that differ from yours, came from the farms. There was a time when the share of life which fell to the woman's part was of equal importance to that of the man. It was still close to that on a farm of that time and, perhaps, so today in some cases. But life has changed with the inventions of recent years. The drudgery has lightened and is still made lighter by sharing; the major problems are often the same. Weather affects the crops and diseases attack the animals or plants. One must rely upon one's self. Success rested upon the joint efforts of all of the family. Farm years are 'We' years.