File: quinnmerlin-oh-farmlife_M.mp3
Speakers:
MQ – Merlin Quinn
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
MQ: I probably remember what happened back in the '30's, that's for sure. Things were tough in the 30's alright but it seemed to be a nice way of living.
KP: What was nice about it?
MQ: It was easy. There was no head work. So you got up in the morning and you went and done whatever supposed to be doing. You were tired in the evening. You did more physical work. The farming back in them days around here anyway was the same all the way down the road, there was a farm about every five chains, from here to the school.
KP: Five chains?
MQ: Five chains wide.
KP: What's a chain?
MQ: It's about 22 yards. So each farm was five chains wide. And you run back you see to hte back.
KP So a hundred yards wide?
MQ Yeah. Some of them were ten chains wide; they were double farms. But everybody done about the same thing. A good farmer was considered he'd have two horses, which was the main thing. 'Cause he had an honest work with his horses, no tractors. There was an odd farmer was only able to afford to have one horse. He was referred to sometimes as a "one horse farmer." That brought that down in history: if a person wasn't doin that great, called a one horse farmer. A real good farmer might have three horses. So each farmer would have two to three acres of potatoes, half an acre of corn and an an acre of turnips; each farmer would keep one sow, one brood sow, and she'd have a couple of litters of pigs per year. A pretty good farmer would have four nice milk cows. Some wouldn't have that many. There was An odd farmer only had one cow. And the grain was the same. A pretty good farmer would have twenty acres of grain or so in. So everybody done about the same thing you see. When digging time would come, let's say we'd have three acres of potatoes, our neighbor would have three, and so on. So we were all doing the same thing. We all had to use a horse if we went to the store or went to church, horse and wagon. As I said, the dances, it was no problem to be happy about it because nobody else had any better. See we all had the same thing. If I couldn't get to go, we ain't goin' there, it wasn't too bad because my neighbor wasn't getting to go either. Today, you just couldn't live like that. I remember going to school in my bare feet. In fact, I remember in the summertime, only girl in the school that would have shoes on would be the teacher. There was a lot of principle, strong principles that they lived by. Their word for instance, it was just the same as a bank note. A lot of the old people if they give you their word, that was just considered a note in the bank.
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