Farm Life During the Great Depression

hey you guys this is Josh and Carolyn with homesteading family and welcome to this week's episode of the pantry chat Food for Thought yeah and we have a really really special guest with us today this is great-grandma Jeannie say hi grandma she is up visiting with granddad with my dad and we wanted to bring her in and she grew up in Texas during the Great Depression on the farm yeah and she has just got some great bits of wisdom to share with us and some good stories yeah and so we wanted to share that little bit with you guys yeah so first off we're down here in the harvest kitchen yeah first we haven't done a pantry so I know a lot of you guys have asked about seeing this face and here we are it's a real nice space and it's a cool summer day out there so the good day breezy little cloudy yeah yeah good spot yeah so we are going to skip the subscriber questions today next pantry chat is gonna be a full QA episode so we're gonna just kind of breeze pass out and even breeze past the chit chat a little bit so that we can just really spend some time with Grandma and have a good visit yeah so with that did you have a very thoughts or questions grandma you when were you born I was born November 23rd 1928 1928 so that was right almost at the beginning of the Great Depression wasn't it yes it was was that big there's even one way done at that time okay everyone in Texas was about the same nobody had any money everybody was pretty poor and we were poor but we were rich and lots of things and loyalty and just everything that makes a family good we had a great my great father and a great mother and how many kids were there there were seven they were actually eight but one died very very young I'm not sure how young but she her name was Alice Bell and she is buried down in the little cemetery that was close to the house there and I've tried to find her but I I can't find her herself hmm that's all right I know she where she is sure do so there were then six of you girls if I remember right and one brother right one older brother yes yeah he's next to the oldest and and you guys were really close I think a lot of you I mean I know there was a long age spread but you guys were pretty close just growing up in that environment and sharing those experiences on the farm yes we were my dad was very here's a lot of fun when he was younger before he got tore he was kind of sick all the time but he would go swimming with him and do all kinds of things with him and do funny things and he dove once and got his head stuck in the mud good memories now you grew up on a farm what were you guys farming we were farming different things mostly just feed for the animals and stuff but we'd grow peanuts and corn and a few things like that and those were commercial crops that your dad sold yes so there was a place in Cross Plains called something about it was like a co-op where people brought all their stuff you know in this manner bottom did whatever he did with them now how far away was that cross plains for more the farm was so how far did you guys have to go do you remember to sell your 15 miles we go in their wagon you know yeah which doesn't seem far to us but 10 or 15 miles back then on dirt roads and horse-drawn wagon mostly or did you have a real rudimentary vehicle once in a while we had a car once in a while and I remember my dad poor dad and they had those inner tubes you know that had to be passed no okay he'd have to stop the car and take off the take off the wheel and everything and take out that inner tube and patch it wait a little while and put it back on and then we'd go again we thought it was very fun to have a car though yeah oh I guess that would have been exciting then yes yeah probably going 1015 miles an hour was a I did tell you one thing about our family my mother was one of three actually her brothers ed was older and then she was in the middle and then her baby sister Mamie and when her mother was when she was four her mother died okay and so her daddy went back to they were in Oklahoma hoping to settle for some land there but apparently they didn't because he went back to Texas and he married a acquaintance of ours somebody and they had a lot of kids together so my mother always felt like she was kind of left out hmm the boy was older and could do things and stuff but she just kind of felt that it wasn't exactly right unfair or something so she was never as outgoing and all that as my dad was but she wasn't she was a lady she was a wonderful woman and she wanted all her girls to grow up to be ladies had nothing else and she wanted all of them to get married because in the beginning this farm where we lived most of the time since I was about 4 or 5 it was a big farm that my dad I mean my my grandpa and his brother Bill bought together and they had a team and they had this ranch or farm a team of horses is what you're referring to right so that you guys know so we take her fried horses Wow almost white they were gray I guess but they were great horses for what they had to do and so we lived there for the time I was about four or five and we loved that ranch house and all the grandkids a lot of them were born at either at the house are close by the house so that they all called it the grandpa's farm granddad's farm everybody called him granddad even though he wasn't granddad everybody the granddad kind of guy yeah he was a great guy and so we had a good time there eventually my daddy got to where he was pretty sick he had a problem with his lungs there is a brothel area or something he couldn't he got sick quite often and so there are people at the village closest to us like it was Cisco they told him that he'd have to come there and live for a while so he could quit farming on that old dirt farm and hopefully get better so during that time my mother put on my dad's overalls and forgot that got the car the team ready and went out and farmed that year and so I all my sisters were gone by then and I came and I came and cook dinner and helps out what I could and then he came home and pretty soon the doctors told him he needed to get off the farmer he was gonna die so he moved to Amarillo but more of the farmers ideas and things that we did on the farm was pretty plain and pretty fun and my older sister had gotten married before we moved to the farm it's five and she and her husband they just pick cotton or cut firewood or anything they could do to earn a living you know kind of did what she had to do were what you could do whatever you could find to do but I didn't you you never asked anything about whether you know it was worth it or anything else he just went and did it and she was born in our house her name is Janelle she's a oldest girl of my sisters she's she's six and a half years younger than me okay is your oldest niece your oldest niece okay yeah so can you tell us a little bit you were talking about cooking there while mom was out driving the team working the fields I assume and you are cooking and can you tell us a little bit about just life right there in the house because you were what we call off-grid today today a lot of people are trying to build the skills to go back to living what we call off-grid but you guys were no power no running water you you had a cistern or well you had to cook I assumed him on would heat can you can you tell us a little bit I mean that was just the way you guys lived can you tell us a little bit about what that what that was like yeah and did you have to start a fire to cook and how did you get water and you have any stories around that yeah we lived in we kids lived in the South room and then there was a front room and then Uncle Bill's room and then my mother dad's room and then the kitchen in the dining room that oh that's a pretty good sized house yeah it was a good sized house it was a good house and see where was I now I was thinking about the feet we used to sleep in the souther I mean it was very cold in there so we never had any heat until my dad got up and built a fire in the fireplace which was in the front room okay and sometimes my mother would get a big rock or something like that and wrap it in a towel and get it hot our feet were horny oh yeah borma said it was that was pretty nice and we played we played we cut paper dolls out of the catalogs that we were saying you know okay I got real worden somebody else maybe JCPenney I don't remember when these thirty but we cut out these these paper dolls and we'd have them doing all kinds of things that you know the couch isn't everything else that they'd used to sit out and so somehow you had a lot of fun without the plastic toys and the devices and the TV you guys from what I've gathered you really had a lot of fun we really did we we had some tallest trees way down in that orchard in the forest in the whatever we call that the woods out there yeah did you have like a woodlot or something yeah yes we had some places you know for the cows and all the just dread get get food and stuff grass and all that we had a pond down there and we used to go down there and play a lot we'd ask my dad can we go swimming today well if it wasn't Sunday he'd say okay long as you don't get your feet wet pretty about pretty funny about most things he was really sweet mmm so we'd go down there and get in those trees and if the wind was blowing a bit you know we just get up there I that's when we got those leaves and we made those things for our dolls and stuff whatever dolls we had I had one doll and I still have it it's in my suitcase and my mother and daddy bought groceries at this place where you buy so many and you finally get a doll you know okay rewards they were doing that way back then three dogs one for me and one for my sister pepper Alexa Dean which she was the second youngest uh-huh cuz you were the youngest yeah she was next to me she was three and a half years older than me but okay which is a little bit much when you're little but we grew up to be the greatest friends in the world just about I really loved her yeah can you remember any time where you either didn't have food or food got really scarce you know I don't really remember that we used to say to mother mother I'm so hungry she'd say there's biscuits and great in syrup on the table if you're very hungry that'll taste good no I I think that is a great household management tip I mean something you know a standing dish there and just saying well if you're really that hungry you can eat that thing glish did that with milk and bread the kids yeah you know milk and bread was a pretty normal staple yeah so what did you what did you grow you guys grew your commercial crops but then you had gardens and a jute you pretty much grew what you ate I think for a large part as far as vegetables go anyways right uh-huh we did we we just go tomatoes and peaches we had a big peach orchard oh it was a wonderful thing we had there this place we had had a long peach orchard on the front side and we had lots of peaches and a peach and uh some kind of a tree a Peter let's see pecan pecan tree that my dad had put there when he was a young boy because that was his dad's farm you know Wow one pecan tree and we just had a good time we we get this corn cobs and make little flowers there's a little people out I'm you know get the girl there's stuff that came off the top of my hair made haired we do that and had Tanner on dolls we just had a good time so when you were cooking dinner for your mom was out on the farm what kind of foods would you cook I would cook corn bread corn always corn bread uh-huh I just made up the corn bread and then I would see whatever it was you know blooming at that time we're ready to eat and we'd have tomatoes and we'd have different things and we had a cellar and mother would as she was canned things she'd have us take them all down there so we'd go down there and see what we had and we have that for dinner so you guys did a fair bit of canning then Kansas a produce that came in from the garden yes yeah I remember that very well what what kind of things did you can green beans or then when the beans were were dried we had to pick them dry and then we we got them all on this big toe sack what we call the toe slack and my my my sister pepper and I would would would don't stop on him until he you know that that got out of the show just show them yeah and then we go where it was kind of windy and we'd hold them up like this and let him fall down in the fur the wind would blow the chapel away yeah and finally we'd get to where we had beans everywhere yeah we've heard lots of beans and we love being too weak we had we always had a hog it seems to me like that we butchered yeah butchered a hog are gonna fall uh-huh yeah and mother would make my soap okay what she used yeah she never had a washing machine she a big round pot out there and she would make a fire under it getting hot watch the closer then and she had a big ten or whatever kind of things those big washbucket huh yes she would rinse it in real things and she had a pole stick hey don't you get him out of the hot water put him in there ransom okay we'd hang them all up on the clothesline baby put that so what's in a while we didn't have raining water and so my dad figured out he had an old gas tank that he got off of a car that was left and out in the field somewhere I think it was a star bet I don't remember for sure so he got this yes tank and he he flipped the top of it somehow and you know turned it over like and put it in this in the kitchen under the window and then he he got the water under the ground you know hallways from from the sisters did you have a spring or you just have a sister and then you had to dip out oh no we had a sister but I'll tell you about that in a minute Hey this was the windmill that he got the water from oh so he hit a windmill he did the plumbing from that to this gas tank in the kitchen huh every sink yeah we had water cold water in the house in the house he built all that yes he did he was very smart Wow well you gotta just the resourcefulness of that yeah putting those pieces together yeah running water out somewhere where that was just about unheard of he had one of those things that you put your shoes on I don't know what you call them now but they just sit up and they're not gonna the shape of a suit a shoehorn no not shoehorn whatever they are my dad made it fix all of our shoes on there okay turn him upside down you know yeah taxes stuff if there's any cobblers out there you can write it in for us what she's talking about is that what it's called alas I don't know what it's really done anyway we we got everything fixed one way or another and all the things that I am not thinking of right now that would be interesting better what did you guys do for light we had coal or lamps lamps oil coal coal oil kerosene kerosene okay now I still have a lamp that I had when I used to do my lesson by well at my house well that's exciting uh-huh they were made of different pieces didn't they weren't all made you know like compact one one one piece yeah and so they were pretty nice hmm so that was that was your main source she had one of those in each room or something or do I usually carried water wherever you went if you so more like each search usually you went to bed when it was dark and got up when it was light but it was pretty nice we didn't have electricity at all as long as we lived on a farm till we move to ever illa my mother and father never owned their own home which was pretty sad except after they moved to Odessa Earl had bought this little place with two little houses on it he wanted my mom and dad to come live in one and they did but he went off to Houston or somewhere I shouldn't even tell this hold him but he did it and so he stopped making the payments on the house and so the people in big brave man on it you know start sending them these thing was insane you know you had to get out and stuff my dad wrote us a beautiful letter saying you know the good things about the little old place and so I went down and borrowed the money on our car to pay for that place and we paid it off and we we had it in writing that it would be their home as long as they needed it you know if they wouldn't have to move or anything huh so that was good yeah mother raised great thing is a great watermelons big watermelons and things like that they had a little sandy place out there for a garden and she really took advantage of that because my dad wasn't really well enough he'd liked everything but he just wasn't really well don't have to do things did she enjoy gardening that sounds actually really mean did you get to help a lot in the garden yes I did yeah or did you have to help a lot but did you like gardening did you enjoy it or was there something here I still go around and pick up the green leaves that leaves up the weaved weeds in our house and my gets after me all the tournament I just can't help it I like things to be neat Stefan with the hole in the I got I got a little video helping away yeah she's out there with Johnny yeah some weeds yeah feel like that's what you're supposed to do and you see there's something that's not there not supposed to be there you just take care of it take care of it get rid of it now before we get too far away from me you were gonna tell us about the cistern because that was your main source of water I think even the windmill had to pump out of the cistern right no no no the windmill was individual the cistern was in this you a u-shaped house and it was in the corner in like the courtyard did a little courtyard or song howl you was around I was in this corner of the house or it came off the house and went right into the sisters so even even for those of you that are you know into prepping or or getting off-grid even back then they had systems naturally of catching water roof water runoff and I think the cistern was in ground right it was just a dug kind of a hand dug well it wasn't even today we put in a tank or something yeah some kind of man went down in their ways and daddy would put the well down in there and when it got to be almost dry he tell me to get in the bucket and I'd get in the bucket and go down clean out the silt that was that was that scary yeah I never even thought about it being scary Wow ever so he's lower you down into the cistern you'd clean it out you'd scoop the buggy pull out the all the silt and then eventually when it was clean enough he'd bring you right out and you know they know that you have to have a lighter did you just know you like that you could see a little bit they don't have to gather up the silt and put it in the bucket yeah Wow it was fun just want something to do we had lots of chickens and things like that we'd have them all out in there we'd be sitting on the porch eating watermelon watermelons and we'd throw the seeds and we would have little groups of little teams you know of chickens voice which would cut it and which one did we call that chicken ball when he grabs up when they're running everyone's got one and the other ones want it and they get a game of chicken ball going now did you ever have a milk cow yes we did we always kind of milk cow okay I always had a milk cow and sometimes we used to go home with someone for dinner after church and then we'd stay late and we'd come home and I I'd have to go out there milk the cow and it would be you know my dad would turn the lights on sometimes we had a car oh that's what was happening then and he turned the lights on for you what those girls so you had no refrigeration no refrige ándale dairy milk and butter and how do you know all that was no refrigeration well daddy built a little thing for my mother outside the dining room window which was just a little hill or what was it it was just right south side he he built it out and and kind of a little box mounted soil around it on the outside oh no no he just he just had spit it's just this this little door or something inside there was just this place and he had a big tin or some kind of a bottom on it okay and it stuck up about an inch or two okay and my mother would put water in there she's on the side where or screams and she'd hang wet probably burlap or something right things on the side mm-hmm and then when the breeze would blow it would make it kind of cooler milk and her butter in there okay and we made we made our milk my butter by turning you know sad bet you hand turned a lot of butter we did we turned a lot of butter did you have one of those old Dasher turns like that with a museum now like a what do you call porcelain type urn that with a stick how they made the butter sock it was you know kind of tall about that call and about that big around man and it was turned just a turn just a turn ya know we had lots of fun we had lots of things going on all the time it seemed like hmm now I want to stick with the dairy for a second you've told me that your mother used to make cottage cheese from the clabber girl mm-hmm yes you'd make that cottage cheese yeah she would put it in some kind of a loose woven like a cheesecloth as learners yeah something like that wasn't anything like that but it was and she was hanging on the clothesline and and let it all drip out till it got kind of you know thickened uh-huh yeah that was good it's good you like that yeah something else something special yeah I bet it was so what all animals did you guys keep you've talked about chickens you had chickens pretty regular for the eggs and I imagine did you just harvest the laying hens or did you grow meat chickens specifically from for me either just know we just had chickens and sometimes mother would say well that one's not laying anymore go catch that one and so add right out there and catch it my dad would sweetie they're wringing out like this the body would flop around on him seems like it's awful now but it didn't seem like it kind of that's just on the farm yeah we had a cow and chickens and did you harvest a beef regularly from the milk cow and she had a baby or didn't were there any beef cows or I don't remember us having any beef cattle but we did have the pig and we used to call it slop you know slop the pig and we'd go out there and give it whatever we had left over from dinner or whatever you know probably a lot of your dairy to the drippings from the cheese usually that would go to the hay yeah that would go and any buttermilk I bet went to the pig do you remember yeah we'd love buttermilk yeah you drink so you harvest a pig too did did your daddy butcher the pig or did he send those out and some people came and usually you know like a couple of people would come and help to do things like that mm-hmm like neighbors yeah if you had you know you're cutting something they're doing anything everybody would meet up and they would go from one farm doing that work together yeah boy we should do more of that today we've been velocity a little bit of that yeah but working together cause Holmes knew you obviously didn't have any freezers at that point no so what did you do with all the meat after you butchered a pig well we had a smokehouse so we used to hang some of it up in the smokehouse once we had I him we were saving and it was hung up in the post in the smokehouse yeah and all of a sudden it disappeared oh and we never knew who had happened to that hand but my dad said I hope they needed it worse than we did oh it's a nice perspective do you remember when did they leave the skin on the hog like when you had that ham to have the skin on do you remember that at all or the bacon yeah that's how you would cure them back then you didn't skin them a lot of people today skinned them and that's that's actually not how you want to cure them it's much better to cure them with that skin on it makes a much better product and you guys made your bacon I'd imagine uh-huh that's why I was a bacon probably didn't have a lot of bacon but we we would have some bacon yeah you remember making any sausages or anything or mostly just I think we had did make sausage no no I don't remember much else but I know we had some sausage yeah and it's always biscuits the syrup on the table if you're hungry is that a maple syrup you know we used to go where they made the syrup we'd cut down sorghum I'll bet yeah yeah you've talked about sorghum a little bit yeah we went and we they had this horse in this middle thing and he would turn it and they out would come the sorghum press the sorghum yeah we lived near somebody for a while that my dad could could had anything he used to kind of cut us a piece of that sorghum and cut out a little spoon and we could you know thank you on the Canes a little bit yeah our kids would like to chew on those cans walk around with a sorghum cane so that was probably sorghum syrup then when you're talking about biscuits and syrup on the table because you didn't have a lot of maple trees down because that would have been a pricey crazy item sorghum syrup bill was always there he was old and he had long hair and long long beard and he was just old and you know for a child he was seemed thrilled he used to be a driver of turds you know like he'd take a bunch of cows whatever they were to a different state you know like a sow on horseback so he he would do cattle driving on horseback and move he'd like would move somebody's heard for them up to market or something a lot of people like sure code for that okay you went to Abilene Kansas or somewhere probably up to where the railroad was yeah they could be sold and shipped out anyway and he lived with you for a long time he lived all the time we were there and then after we've had to move he he stayed until eventually he got into a assisted living up in Abilene I went up there to see months after I was married and he looked at me and he said will Doris Jean you eight as pretty as you used to be do you tell your eyesight isn't as good as my dad worked for a WPA I think it was never Pierre BWAA or something that Roosevelt started for the people that didn't have any money okay didn't have any you know jobs yeah and he had to walk across the field all the way over to rode over there where somebody picked him up and took him they did everything by brute force by hands you know they were building a road and they had a very I guess I would call him mean but he wasn't really mean I guess but my dad was trying to move this big crater and he had a big board underneath that trying to lift it up you know and it flipped out and it hit him like this and it's blendable ways and he came home and then he said that this man told him you know they couldn't work anymore and and we were all mad at this man and stuff Iran he says oh you just have to pray for him talking dude just pray for him Freddy doesn't feel like that so it was awful I used to run and meet him and carry his bucket yes you know his lunch bucket on the way home no he'd get home he'd be so tired just sit down over the porch and lean back you know on his feet would be holding the ground he just lean back and go to sleep no I worked hard he they had all my folks worked so hard my mother works so hard and then he had another brother who had cancer of the ear hmm and he didn't he wasn't married and he didn't have any place to go so he came and stayed with us and my mother would she made him a little table in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to eat with with all of us because the cancer just ate his ear off and way into his you know it's um whatever is eating you know we hear his his joy was John acted in every everything and that's the reason she was so sure she wanted her daughters to be married so they wouldn't ever have to live with anyone else because she had these two guys you know I bet she didn't mind I'm sure she but she wanted her girls to grow up and get married [Music] so what one topic I wanted to hear from you about a little bit while we got to here and that's just forgot e I've noticed that you you picked up some lifelong habits from from living in those days and having make use of everything and I still see that you'll use a tea bag sometimes four and five times and your fold your napkin a whole lot to use it and I mean what was that like and what are your thoughts about that because I know that's one that's just stayed with you and your whole life just about that need to be resourceful and really really useful of everything I'm not sure why it was just that way you know we always were taught to use everything a little piece of string or a little whatever you know anything you got you just curled it up and saved it some more yeah sometimes you you know sometimes you need it and it would be just the thing that you needed and my mother and father are both very resourceful they just they just knew how to use everything because that's all they had it's a hard skill to come by today because we have so much access yeah we have to work and this is a challenge for all of us to work both creatively but in the self discipline as well to make good use of what we have yeah yeah and you guys just had to it wasn't really a choice there you couldn't just go down to the store and buy it mm-hmm no sorry there wasn't that story I think you were saying the other day that you guys were 60 miles from the main town regular yeah that's when I went out to visit my brother okay okay no doubt a Pecos Pecos Texas Way Out West Texas okay uh-huh hot dry huh 60 miles out of town on a dirt road was it uphill both direction well then you had to walk two feet of snow though I know maybe 100 degree heat I know there were two more questions that I wanted to ask you and that was you you didn't bring in probably didn't have a lot of access to health care medical care growing up you probably didn't bring a doctor in every time somebody got sick can you remember what your mom would do did she have favorite remedies that she used or something that that happened commonly in your house I wish I did my mother was kind of a doctor to a lot of people you know when people would get sick they would call somebody to help them I was a youngest so I usually used to go with her and help her you know I guess I have got a lot of wise and she would just you know feed him the right thing do whatever she had to do to help him get better you know I'm not sure what she used so much but we never went to the doctor hardly ever yes you were dying yeah had to be pretty bad yeah I know I cut my leg pretty bad when I was about five or six and my folks weren't there I was down visiting with some neighbors because they had planned to go somewhere do something that day and my I was playing hide-and-go-seek and I broke I fell on a broken fridge are you know oh and I cut my leg open to the boat I could just see it oh you know darker blue and stuff down in there they wrapped something around it and poured kerosene or what I think and I never got sewed up or anything it's still you know 90 years later is still kind of it's very touchy there oh okay it's not really sword just if you touch it it hurts okay so interesting you know that's kind of thing and I I did go to the doctor once I broke my arm right here I hung that little girl stuck out through there oh like that you know so I'm gonna go for that all the girls came running out and said what happened what happened when he missed it or nothing he needs his brother are what you do she had to go a chair to go across the field way over there she knew these people that have my folks did no car or some kind and so they came and got me and my mother and my mother was holding me and I had this hard-on pillow and it was bleeding you know they took me to rising star and rising star head doctor there was a little Saturday I think Saturday afternoon and he was at a football game and he was kind of drug to one doctor and I read and then they sent me to a hospital and another place I remember that the boy or the man carried me up these stairs where I stayed there for overnight I think and then I had a you know a cast on it and everything and after after six weeks later I went back and they took it off and it was kind of crooked you know what I'm straight that guy said why'd we break it again and steadily right you know my mother said no way that's all right anyway that what happened with dad that was kind of well we didn't hear how you broke it oh there was a place in the cow lot where the big girls jumped off this table and caught a hold of this big thing they put up there Piper sub bar huh and then they fly off you know get going kind of hang on I can do that too so without they tried it but I didn't do it I didn't hit that thing I just fell fell them broke it Wow okay well that kind of leads right into my next question cuz hey we've got an awfully good set of kids here but you know they're all prone to kind of get me into trouble every so often we've had things blown up and we've had a whole range of things from our fairly well behaved I think it just goes with having children can you think of a time that you got in trouble or somebody in your household got in trouble cause some mischief I'm kind of putting you on the spot there but I'm trying to think I'm thinking of one thing that happened my dad was growing watermelons out in the garden and he had this one watermelon that was quite big and he said it wasn't ripe yet and so on Sunday afternoon these two girls came to our house to visit they were a little bit older than me but probably about peppers age what I'm was and so we went out we were looking in the garden you know doing everything but that's what all you did did I ever give those days we were looking in the garden and this girl said that watermelon is ripe I can tell so we said well daddy said it wasn't ripe yet and he wasn't gonna cut it yet so she said I tell you why if somebody could go in the kitchen and get a knife and bring it out here we could just turn it over and cut into it in the middle take a peek inside and see and so I did it I wouldn't got the but the knife brought it out she turned it over and kind of little peace out it was still green you know left it sitting there so you couldn't see the whole normal no no no so about two three weeks later maybe four weeks later I don't know for sure but my dad went out well I think the watermelons gonna be right now I'm gonna make it so he went out and picked it and he brought it to the house and he looked at it and it was all ruined inside you knew there was something rotten yeah and so he got us all out there and he said now I wanna know if it's what I be had something to do with this we all said no I didn't cut a hole in the watermelon okay so we all went to bed I lay there bed and I could not go to sleep I never lied to my daddy before in my life and I just was I could not sleep him way in the middle of the night I got up what had gotten bad with my daddy and my mama I got him by my daddy and I told him it was me I got the knife and these girls cut him open so we could tell who it was right first up he said that's nice Sonny I'm glad you told me I'm really happy you told me he just really was he was the greatest said my mom was just as good in her own way she's just was wanted us to all be good and not be perfect but be you know not get into troubles and stuff so we did our best that's all we can do so all of us can do is to do our best I'm sure we all did bad things at one time or another that we didn't even summer let her know but I guess I was I've been called to stick to story or two-seated or to something if you're you know you try to be good all the time and stuff I think I was trying to be good for my mom and dad they did so much that's a thankful heart sure I never wanted to disappoint my dad again hmm never wanted to we had more kids that didn't wanna disappoint their dad yeah well he sounds like he was a he was a daddy that had a lot of patience and mercy and the fella that you didn't want to disappoint mm-hmm just look at us like he was so disappointed in us all we tell him you know we did something Mauro he find out we did something or something you didn't like that well we're gonna have to yeah you got to get to the fair get Owens getting ready we've got what how many kids have an entry in the fair I think eight out of nine opted to enter the field right oh well Rebecca didn't I'm sorry seven out of the baby didn't enter Rebecca Elizabeth no Rebecca interest interested Oh almost in the youngest dress in the younger he's been so busy working around here that he often to not spend the time doing that this year no but um we're gonna go see what ribbons they got hmm do that but grandmas we're wrapping up what do you think kept your family so close that's that the parting thought I'd like to wrap up with the fact that we all love God or we knew that God was in control of things and he loved us and we all just loved one another we we just it was all it was all about God my folks just realized that you know it was important to be to do what was right into their variety to do just live the way that God meant for us to live he wanted to stay there abundantly and we do Wow thank you so much yeah so so important yeah thanks grandma thanks for being with us thanks for sharing your stories with everybody out there there's a whole lot of people that just really are gonna appreciate those stories and either remember some things themselves or just those little bits of wisdom that we all absolutely like to glean and learn from yeah hey do you still remember how to make your corn bread [Laughter] well you sure pull a good weed alright guys thank you so much for joining great hanging with you and we will see you next time for a good Q&A session I am so leave us your questions about today and about anything else and we'll catch up with you then goodbye you

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 123,760

Keywords: Homesteading, Self-Sufficiency, Sustainable, Living, Homesteading Family, Food Preservation, farm life, farm life during the great depression, old fashioned living, great depression, the great depression food, the great depression, life during the great depression, great depression food, great depression cooking, living off grid, farming in the 1930s america, off grid, off grid living

Id: YexZP3_4XLg

Length: 52min 11sec (3131 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019