Life on the Farm
photos courtesy of Lois Bond
~ by Julia Pearson Bill, Dick, and Earl Bond.
The hardscrabble life of the dirt farmer in Brown County in the early part of the 20 th century was personified by Kin Hubbard’ s Abe Martin, the materially poor but rich in rural philosophy comic character who still maintains his reign as county mascot. A family on a Brown County farm meant that your children had the proverbial“ meal on the table,” three times a day. Other things were not easily come by.
The earth itself suffered from topsoil depletion caused by poor farming practices. Plowing the hills in the fall, the rich loam literally washed down the hills with spring thaw and rains, until only the clay underneath remained. Some farmers moved on to new locations where soil was not claimed by erosion. This was eventually remedied by the use of crushed limestone spread on the fields and readily obtained from nearby Limestone quarries.
In southern Indiana, corn was the mainstay of crop production, with smaller acreage in oats and wheat. For“ cash money,” some farmers planted tobacco and apples. The huge vegetable gardens, soil sweetened from the potash of woodburning fireplaces and stoves, yielded a harvest that had to last throughout the year, till the next summer’ s produce. Hundreds of jars of canned goods were put up in the summer kitchens by Brown County mothers. Hickory nuts and walnuts were gathered in earnest. Straw-lined pits stored cabbages, turnips, and potatoes when fruit cellars were not available. Blackberries growing in the countryside yielded fruits for canning for the family as well as for sale in Indianapolis markets.
Corn ears were pulled from the stalk individually by hand and tossed into an empty wagon. Neighbors came and shared the work. As many as four or five families arrived with their teams and wagons shortly after daybreak.
This was a time of backbreaking labor, made palatable by the social contact. Some men took bets on which one could shuck the most corn in a day. There were“ bangboards” attached to the sides of the wagons to help the ears land directly into the wagon beds. The corn fodder was tied into bundles for cow and horse feed. Some men were hired in, paid a dollar a day plus meals and a bed. Many farm dogs were taken along during corn harvesting so they could catch the mice and rats that ran out. Some young men from Brown County went to other farms in the west— Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota— during the corn husking season. They earned as much as five cents per bushel, their meals, and a place to sleep in the barn.
Winfer Wilkerson.
20 Our Brown County March / April 2017