In Springtime, a gardener’s fancy turns
to planting. Ena recalls the days when planting was done with horses.
“Dad had a horse-hoe,” she says, “We put the plants out by hand. For grain,
there was a special machine and a pair of working horses, but for the cabbage
and carrots, the horse-hoe made the rows, and we set the plants out by
hand. Dad planted acres and acres of cabbage and grain. In those
days, they didn’t feed corn to the cows,
now it’s part of their diet; even dairy farms grow the corn now. The seed
came from Kingston.
I would imagine it was the Bluenose Fruit
Company where Dad would buy it. They had big bins, like a bulk food store.”
A retired farmer says the Bluenose Fruit
Company was closed before he ever needed to buy seed. His memories are
of the Co-Op Store in Kingston. “The building is still there,” he says,
“The Co-Op building is on the Middleton side of the Lion’s Club building.
It’s been closed for years. I belonged to it, and I know they sold seeds;
they were dealing with farmers. They used to sell everything; meat and
groceries, fertilizers, and everything that farmers buy.”
Marie doesn’t know where the seeds came
from. Her memories are of picking the crops, especially beans. “I picked
for all sorts of places, but I’m retired now.”
Marie’s career stretches back more than
60 years. “I picked because we needed the money,” she says candidly. “We
would get a cent a pound for beans. I’d go with my mother and a couple
of sisters. We walked to where we were picking. Clyde Neily’s place was
on the Messenger Road, and we would walk from our home on South mountain
in East Torbrook. On a good day, we could pick 9 hampers, they were about
35 pounds apiece. Of course, back then, 35 cents would go about as far
as five dollars will go today. We picked yellow and green beans, and we’d
even sit on them to get more into each hamper. We carried a water jug,
and a lunch, but it could get awful hot out there in the sun. Sometimes
it rained, and there’d be plenty of mud. Sometimes we’d be picking and
get wet. We’d have to run under a tree. Then they didn’t want you to pick
beans in the rain, now they have spray of some kind, so you can pick them
before the dew is off. When we finished, at the end of the season, we’d
get a real good feed of ice cream by way of a thank-you.”
Marie’s best memories of the early days
are of working side by side with her family and the other workers. “When
the picking was real good, they’d go by truck and bring in extra pickers,
it was good to meet them, and to work with them. Walking home after finishing
was the worst part of it. We’d be awfully hot, and we’d have to turn around
and get a supper cooked for father and a couple of brothers. My father
was working another farm, for a dollar a day.”
The biggest difference in bean picking
over the years, Marie says, is the amount of beans. “The picking was better
back then, we get more frost now, the beans don’t grow so well. And the
price that they pay now; thirty cents a pound, that’s a mighty big change
from one cent.”
|
REAL RURAL WIMMIN STORIES