I lived on a farm in Kentucky from the time I was about 1 until I was 6. Even though that doesn’t seem like long, we also spent just about every weekend and holiday (except Christmas—Santa might have gotten confused!) at our relatives and our farm was sold to my mom’s older sister and another older sister live down the road.
This is Uncle Gus and Aunt Cora Mae--couple on left with their first son Joe. They are the ones that move onto our farm.
My mother’s father lived with us and died shortly after we moved to St. Louis—yeap, the big city! My other grandfather lived with one of his sons (who was mentally retarded) on his farm (about 7 miles from ours) and one of his daughters lived on the other side of the ‘truck-patch’. I’m not sure we ‘trucked’ any of ours; I think we did barter with neighbors for strawberries, watermelons and such.
Dad enjoyed hunting, never large animals (I think this was a carry-over syndrome from WWII) but rabbits and squirrels. It was not unusual for him to be up at 4 AM to go hunting and have the squirrel skinned and cut up when mom got up and cook a breakfast that had eggs, ham, gravy, (sometimes both red-eye and milk gravy) biscuits, sometimes fried potatoes, (usually homemade jam or jell and sometime applebutter) and fried squirrel and fresh milk from the milk-cow.
Not my picture, but very simular...but somehow ours seemed much bigger, but I was 'little'. We had lots of chickens.
We had a hen coop. We would trade eggs for coffee and sugar and flour at a small store only about 5 mile from the house. The closest big grocery store was in Paducah, and that was about a 50 mile round trip.
I was allowed to help gather eggs. I hated the ones with chicken ‘hocky’ on them. I had my own basket and had to be very careful not to drop any or break any. I remember that we had a collie (dad had to shoot it after if had fallen asleep behind the tractor and he accidentally ran over it—I think that was the first time I saw my dad cry!) I don’t think we had cats, but they would gather at the hen house and eat the eggs and sometimes scare the chicken into not laying eggs. Do you know what you call a chicken that doesn’t lay eggs? Sunday dinner! LOL! Well, I had heard a conversation about the cats and they had to go, which I figured, the big axe! One morning, as we sat around the kitchen table, eating our big breakfast, dad made the statement that we would not be having a problem with the cats anymore. As I chewed on a squirrel leg, I looked up at dad and asked, ‘is this tat?” (meaning cat).
(Fried Squirrel)
A look of horror came over my moms face as she said, ‘absolutely not’ and then she rethought what I had just said, and looked at my dad and said, ‘it’s not, is it?’ I thought my grandpa (simply known as ‘pa’) was going to choke on his oatmeal. (Pa never, or seldom, had what we ate for breakfast, just oatmeal.)
Pa is the one to the left of the man in front with the cane. This picture was taken to the side of the church, Mount Moriah.
Things where hard, and being a little one, I had no idea. It was in the early to mid 1950’s and there was a terrible draught going on. That’s why we left. Daddy always said if he would have stayed one more year, he’d had enough beans (green beans) to feed all of St. Louis!! That’s a lot of beans.
We where called ‘dirt farmers’. I thought we were doing pretty good, ‘cause we had lots of dirt! I remember we had a big horseshoe like drive in the front of the house, and the dirt was so dry it felt like baby powder. One day after mom had just given me a bath (we basically all used the same water) I went outside and threw dirt into the air and got filthy! That’s the one time I remember mom really yelling at me. There were farmers having to truck water just to bathe and cook and survive. Our well never dried up, but I do remember dad being really worried about it and checking it often. There is nothing better than a cool drink of well water!
I really feel sorry for people that never had that experience. We were close. Mom cooked all our meals and we all ate together, except my older sister had started school, so she didn’t eat dinner (our lunch meal) with us. Supper was the evening meal, and we all ate together again. Mom must have felt like she was living her whole life in that kitchen! I know it was a hard life, but for a little kid, it was great fun.
Mom was the baby of eight kids, (one died at birth), and dad was the middle of nine boys (a total of 16 children—two didn’t make it to adult), so I had lots of cousins to play with at the weekend gatherings, and that was almost every weekend. Thank God those continued even after we moved to the big city.
Hubby is St. Louis born and bread, but about 10 ½ years ago we were transferred to Madison, AL. It was a small town, but has grown almost 3 times the size it was (10,000 to 30,000) in the 10 years we’ve been here. But it still is a ‘small-town’ feel. Everyone looks out for everyone elses kids. We have churches instead of bars and it’s a great family-feel environment. We live in a subdivision across from cotton fields, cattle and horsed. Almost the best of two worlds, and nobody looks at you like you’re nuts if you smile and wave to someone on the front porch, whether you know them or not!
We live on a dirt road in western Kentucky. I once asked my mom why we always said ‘western Kentucky’ and she said, ‘honey, we put our shoes on when we go someplace!’ LOL! My dad was from Possum Trott and mom was from Benton, home of Big Singing and Tator Day!
We raised pigs and grew green beans. We had chickens, and dad rented out our barns to tobacco farmers to dry their tobacco leaves.
I had an uncle who raised cattle, and we would trade pork for beef! It was a great life. I have great memories. Read one of them I posted!
That’s my story, and I’m stickn’ to it (that’s a little inside joke—my maiden name is Story!)
Hope I didn’t bore you all too much.
Thanks to to Duane & Eva for letting me use their pictures. I've never met them, but trust me, if they are from Kentucky, they are okay in my book! Go and vist their page--It's great!
I also 'borrowed' the pictures of the dead squirrels and the cooked squirrel, but forgot to mark who I got them from. If they look like yours, comment me and I'll give you credit for them!
Chicken coop picture is borrowed from Katherine Plumer on her website Random Rosecombs. Stop by and see her, it's cool!
I got the picture of the cow 'The Brown Cow' another neat site.
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