SEGMENT: FARMING METHODS, BUTCHERY, & HIRED HELP
James N. Price>UIS Collection N-R>UIS Collection N-R, Segment 7
| <-Previous Segment |
- HIRED HELP
- Brother spent summers harvesting in Kansas, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Canada, moving northward as the season progressed and returning home in the fall.
- FARMING METHODS
- Plowed by hand behind a pair of horses. Says he learned from a chart in his "bible" that while plowing an acre in this way, you walk eight miles. One got up at four a.m. to feed the horses, water them, let them stand, milk the cows, etc. Plowing started at six a.m. when the other work was done. Mentions his grandmother had lots of chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys to feed. Explains methods of feeding horses hay and oats. They are fed at noon, too, then watered and go back to plowing at one p.m. until 6p.m. After that the farmer had to return the cows from pasture, unharness and feed and water the horses again, feed the chickens and hogs again. During different seasons, these jobs were basically the same, plus planting, haying and harvesting. Mentions threshing teams, neighbors helping. Threshers used coal instead of wood because sparks could set fire to the flying chaff.
- BUTCHERY
- Describes hog butchering six at a time, shooting, sticking, bleeding, scalding, boiling down lard, and making sausages in detail.
