THE OLD HOMESTEAD

By Eva Marie Johnson

 

Recorded and written by

Dale Castle

Kansas City, Mo

 

 

I came into this wonderful world as Eva Marie Johnson on Sept 26, 1917 four miles outside of Gerster, Missouri on the family farm of 175 acres. Life was sure a lot different than it is now in 2005. Even though I was a young girl, I had chores to do everyday just like everyone else. It wasn’t easy to run a farm and everyone had to do their part.

 

My day usually started well before school. I was expected to gather the eggs, feed the chickens, milk the cows; bottle feed the baby sheep and pull weeds from the garden before breakfast. After school I would feed the sheep and chickens again and milk the cows a second time. Like most girls, I also helped my mom quite a bit in the kitchen.

 

My father always got up at four in the morning and did a lot of his chores before the sun came up with only a kerosene lantern to see by. His day didn’t end until well after dark. Everyone of those 175 acres we owned were plowed by a horse with my dad walking behind him. He was a strict but fair man. From time to time, men down on their luck would stop by the farm wanting to work a few hours for a meal. I don’t remember my father ever turning one single man down. A farmer had to be a jack of all trades since there was very little money to spend. If any farm implements broke, they had to be repaired by my dad. He even fixed our shoes on a shoe last out in the shed.

 

I was about 12 years old when the depression hit our country. Our farm was pretty self-reliant so it didn’t affect us much. Some of our relatives in the city lost their jobs and lived with us until things got better. We had chickens, pigs, turkeys and cattle for meat. The sheep provided wool which we made into coats and blankets. The ponds held plenty of fish and our huge garden did very well each year. A couple of days work in the woods would give us enough wood to heat the house for several weeks and the wells were always full of drinking water.

 

I think my favorite time of the year was the harvest. All the men and women from the surrounding farms would meet at one farm and work together to bring in the crops. It was fascinating to watch the giant horse drawn thrashers and combines work the fields. When one farm was finished we all went to the next one and continued until everyone’s crops were in. When it was our turn, all of us kids would help mom bring the table into the living room where there was more room to add several leaves to the table. The kitchen would be busy as a bee hive with as many as fifteen women and girls working to fix enough food to feed all the men working in the fields. This was the only time of the year that we had ice. My job was to make sure that I kept plenty of ice in each mans glass of tea. I liked this chore because it gave me a chance to flirt a little bit with some of the boys that were working with the men.

 

The garden was a lot of work but very necessary to our getting through the long winters. Potatoes were planted in mid March along with radishes, onions and lettuce. Planting continued until Jun when it ended with pumpkins. Seems like we were constantly picking peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, turnips, lettuce, peppers and digging up potatoes and onions. I have a lot of fond memories of sitting on the front porch in the evenings listening to cicadas and talking to my mom and siblings while we snapped beans, shelled peas and husked corn. By fall, the root cellar was full of brightly colored jars of canned vegetables. The smoke house was filled with meat and several cords of wood were stacked next to the house. It gives a person a good warm feeling to know that you are well prepared for the long cold winter.

 

Some of our winters in Missouri could get pretty bad. I can remember many times when the snow was so deep that we had to attach a rope from the back porch to the outhouse so we could find our way. The big wood burning stove in the living room did a decent job of warming the downstairs but upstairs where all the bedrooms were located was a different story. My mother would heat up several irons on the stove and wrap them in towels. All of us girls would get in a huge bed together and mom would set the irons at our feet and cover us up with several quilts that she made from wool. Between our body heat and the irons it stayed nice and warm for a few hours. The smell of bacon and ham being cooked on the wood burning stove by my mom would find its way upstairs and wake us up.

 

Of course we didn’t have electricity or running water so when it came time to take a bath, the water had to be brought in a bucket at a time. It had to be heated on the stove so it took quite a while to fill the wooden tub. The men took their baths first, then the women and finally the children. Everyone used the same water.

 

With no electricity, kerosene is what we used in its place. There were many kerosene lamps through out the house. We even had a chicken brooder that ran on kerosene. An x was put on each egg and one of us kids would turn them every day.

 

We walked to our one room school house since it was only a mile. A lot of the kids would bring eggs for lunch. We had a big wood burning pot belly stove in the center of the classroom. The eggs would be wrapped in wet newspapers and set in the coals as soon as we walked in. By lunch time they would be hard boiled and ready to eat. Once a week all the kids would bring in vegetables so we could make a big pot of soup on the stove.

 

Once I was old enough to go to the two room high school I rode a horse because it was five miles. I kept the horse in the school barn and fed him everyday at noon. I remember when the hillside behind the grade school caught fire while we were in class and we all grabbed gunny sacks and buckets from the barn. A creek was close by so we filled the buckets with water and soaked the gunny sacks. It wasn’t long before we had the fire under control.

 

My dad would take the wagon into town every Saturday to trade eggs, milk, vegetables and anything else that we had a surplus of. He would line the wagon with straw and load everything including us kids into the back. The four mile ride was always very enjoyable to everyone. After my parents finished their business we would always stop by the bakery where my mom would buy two loafs of bread. We ate the bread on the way home and it taste as good as angel cake to us. If we were real lucky we would all get one nickel to buy candy at the general store.

 

I can’t remember any of us ever going to the doctor. There weren’t any hospitals around so all of us children were born at home. Mom grew just about every herb known to man for cooking and medicinal purposes which came in real handy when we got sick and couldn’t afford a doctor. A rain barrel stood under each corner of the house to catch water which we used for washing our hair.

 

Christmas was my favorite holiday. I just loved going up into the woods to pick out a Christmas tree. After arguing for a while we would all finally agree on which one to cut down. Dad tied a rope around it and dragged it back to the house. A lot of our Christmas vacation was spent ice skating on the ponds and creeks with our friends. We always built a big fire to stand by when we got cold. The feast my mom cooked for Christmas dinner was fit for a king. A juicy turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, candy yams, dressing, olives, carrots, corn, mince pie and of course, pumpkin pie.

 

The old homestead is no longer owned by our family, but I will always remember what that old white house looked like. The wonderful memories are etched in my mind forever.

 

Published in U S Legacies May 2005