Fall - Social and Community Activities

Fall - Social and Community Activities

With the fall chill in the air and the days getting shorter, the pace of life on the farm quickened. For most farm families, fall began with the start of school, final crop harvest, and the ripening of apples. Children returned to school taller and stronger after a summer of working in the fields. There were a flurry of fall school activities – programs, sports, and school social events. Some older children often took their first steps toward leaving home by attending high school in town or working outside of the farm, earning money picking corn, for example. Farm families also enjoyed trips to town and activities related to fall harvest and marketing crops and livestock. In the late fall, relatives and neighbors helped each other butcher a hog or cow to provide meat through the winter and these events were as much about talking with neighbors and socializing as about the work at hand. After school, some farm children went fishing or hunting – bringing home deer or squirrels to put additional meat on the dinner table. Others picked fall garden vegetables such as pumpkins and squash or gathered nuts to be used for holiday candy.

Fall - Chores and Work

Fall - Chores and Work

Children had to do chores before school -- milking cows; feeding and watering cows, horses, sheep, and pigs. After school, they did similar chores and helped gather eggs, chop wood, and gather corn cobs to heat the cook stove in the kitchen.

"We always had lots of chores and even as a small kid, growing up, we had to take our to turn…We had chickens, we had hogs, and we had cattle, both dairy cattle and regular cattle. Lots of horses because we farmed with horses." -- Hollis Miller (Quicktime required)

Merna Bailey remembers her chores.

"As girls we didn't have to do anything in the morning before school…But at night, fill the cob baskets, several cob baskets. And it wasn't too bad when we had nice corncobs in the corncrib, but when they were gone, we had to go to the hog pen and pick up the hog pen cobs. That wasn't too much fun…We helped to feed the chickens, gather the eggs... The corn they picked by hand with wagons, the team pulling the wagon…My dad…was a good corn picker… I sometimes went out…so I learned to use the peg." -- Merna Bailey (Quicktime required)

Preserving food for winter

Walter Schmitt remembers their big garden and many fruit trees. "Mother canned a lot of cherries. We had a couple apple trees and…currant bushes, blueberry bushes. We did raise a lot of food of our own. We raised a lot of potatoes. We had a big garden."

Ruth Nettleton said their orchard had many trees, too. "I suppose six or eight different kinds of apples. And there were plums and there were cherries, and there were grapes. Mother canned a lot. After I was married I planned to can a hundred quarts of apples and a hundred quarts of tomatoes." She also pickled beets by boiling them and putting them in a vinegar solution to preserve them.

The Whole Hog

	What is a "cracklin'"? Darrell Ronne remembered the wonderful taste of pork cracklin's. After the hog was killed, some one scraped the hair off the hide. Then, they cut the hide into small chunks, and put each chunk into a big kettle. They heated the kettle and boiled the pieces of hog hide, which removed the fat from the skin. The leftover pieces were fried and eaten. These "cracklin's" were very tasty.

Farm families used every part of the hog. Some meat from hogs was smoked or cured with salt (bacon, salt pork, and ham). Meat had to be cured or preserved because most farms did not have electricity to run refrigerators. Even the fat from the hog [lard] was used to make soap.

"You saved everything in those days … saved the liver. You made the liverwurst [sausage]… We had a lot of sausage and hams, cured our own hams … Even when we butchered…we had other couples come over or some of my aunts and uncles would come over, and you'd kind of divide up a little bit when you went home." --Dean Buller (Quicktime required)

Some people rented a freezer box in town where they could store meat because they did not have electricity on the farm to run a refrigerator/freezer.

First the hog was killed, then dipped in a barrel of hot water to help remove the hair. The skin was scraped over and over to remove all the hair. Then the hog carcass was cut in pieces: some for smoking and salt curing, some to be ground up for sausage.

"We had a regular little building for a smokehouse. Made a fire underneath…a fire that wouldn't burn, just smoke. Apple wood would be the best bark to use for to give it a flavor… And the hams, we cut, made hams and we salted them. The night of when we butchered we'd salt the hams and the hind hams…and you'd be sure and put that full of salt [so it wouldn't spoil]." -- Albert Friesen (Quicktime required)

Recipe: How to Make Soap

Sometimes Merna Bailey's family asks her for recipes. Even though she knows people don't make their own soap anymore, she is happy to share her recipe:

"Accumulations of lard and fat from various butcherings plus bacon grease and the lye would be poured into a big stone jar. Using one can of lye, two and a half pints of cold water, mix to six pounds of fat, lard and what combination. The lye solution is poured slowly. At the end steady stream and even stirring, continuing to stir with a wooden spoon until it can stand on its own. Leave for 24 hours and then cut…into bars to dry and spread out. I felt so proud, good and proud when I looked at those big chunks of soap…Using the lye could be dangerous." -- Merna Bailey (Quicktime required)

Pumping and plumbing

Few farmers in the 1920s had indoor plumbing. Instead, they dug a hole four to five feet deep and placed a wooden outhouse on top. The entire family used the outhouse year 'round. Hollis Miller said their family's "privy" (outhouse) was a small wooden structure that rested on the dirt over a deep hole that had been dug by hand. Inside were two seats. No flushing water, no toilet seat, no toilet paper. "You always saved the Sears and Roebuck catalog," he said. "We didn't have the tissue paper that you have today." He remembers running to the outhouse on cold winter days and using crumpled up pages of the Sears catalog as toilet paper.

Fall - School

Fall - School

	Was school different in the 1920s? Kenneth Jackson describes a typical school day. Watch This Video (Quicktime required)

Country grade schools were located so most of the farm children didn't have to walk or ride more than two miles to school. High schools were often in town. In the country schools, there was no electricity, and the only heat came from a stove. Students walked, rode their ponies or biked to school. Kenneth Jackson remembers riding his pony to school.

"Used to ride them to country school and even rode them to high school some… When I went to high school I went to McCool, which was six miles from home. Rode the Shetland pony there quite a few times; sometimes when it was 10 below zero… My grandfather lived in McCool, and he had a barn… So we kept our ponies in the barn there during the daytime. That was the trouble with country schools, it got cold … there wasn't any place you could put the pony in out of the bad weather, so we had to walk when it was cold and stormy." -- Kenneth Jackson (Quicktime required)

What's for lunch?

Try this! Click below to pack a virtual lunch bucket from the 1920s. Virtual lunch bucket "You had a little syrup bucket. That was your dinner bucket. And you had a slice of bread with it, maybe with syrup or…lard from the hog. Just plain lard. We didn't have peanut butter and jelly. Well, jelly they made quite often because there were wild grapes or wild plums on fence lines so we'd get wild plums, and the women would go and pick those sometimes and make jelly out of it." -- Albert Friesen (Quicktime required)

	If you think you've had some strict teachers, wait until Walter Schmitt tells you about his. Watch This Video (Quicktime required)

	Blackboard Slogans Here are some sayings the teacher would write on the blackboard in the front of a 1920s country school in York. Read these sayings and then make up your own: "A thing done right today means no trouble tomorrow." "Words spoken, like eggs broken, are hard to repair." "What you are to be, you are now becoming." "Nobody stumbled into anything sitting down." "It's very nice to be important, but more important to be nice." "Even a fish wouldn't get hooked if he kept his mouth shut." "The only way to have a friend is to be one."