It is very damp and foggy this morning in Tennessee. This time of
year, at the start of September always takes me back to the Harvest time
on the Ozark farm where I was raised.....good times.....
My Ozark Mountain Valley Home-September 1950
I remember the taste of an ice cold Grapette, lifted out of the old soda box full of big hunks of ice broken up,
My Ozark Mountain Valley Home-September 1950
I remember the taste of an ice cold Grapette, lifted out of the old soda box full of big hunks of ice broken up,
at the old country store up the road and on top of the hill a mile from
our farm. The old soda box sit on the creek gravel concrete slab front
porch of the old store and the store owner would chip up a 50 pound
block of ice every morning to keep the pop cold for when we boys came
out of the hay fields at the end of another hot September day. We spent
August and September shocking oats, baling and hauling in alfalfa hay
or cutting corn for sileage and putting it into the upright silos. Lots
of folks don’t know what it is to shock oats, since farm machinery has
moved on like every thing else in life and the old ways pretty well
forgotten. Oats, to make oat hay or grain, was cut in the field by
machines called binders. The binder was simply a machine that cut the
oats, gathered it in a sheath and tied a binder twine around the middle
of it. You then went through the field with us boys as field hands and
picked up the individual oat binded sheaves and stacked them in groups
of about six or eight bundles, stood on end with the grain at the top,
topped with a single bundle on top to shed water. It was a beautiful
picture of a field properly shocked and lined up in neat rows for the
neighbors to admire when they drove by. We took a lot of pride in doing
it right and the neighbors would judge the worth of a man by the care
and condition of his fields. The shocks of oats would stand in the
field for several weeks to dry and cure before you brought the wagons
out and hauled them into the barn hay loft. If you decided to harvest
the grain from the shocks, instead of just feeding it as forage, you
hauled the cured sheaves to the community Thrashing machine, which my
dad and a neighbor owned and used to thrash all the surrounding farmers
grain. The old Thrashing machines were an absolute marvel and I loved
thrashing time. We boys would be on the wagons, pitching the sheaves of
oats into the mouth of the Thrashing machine, which would then separate
the grain from the stems and put it into burlap sacks to load up and
take home to the farms. The resulting straw stack would grow into a
small mountain before you were through. We ran the Thrashing machines
with an huge old two cylinder John Deere tractor from the 20’s or 30’s, I
never did know the exact vintage but I’ll never forget the sound pop
pop pop’n along, and the whole community of farmers would be there to
help get the crop in. Best part of it was the Lunch Break! Boy, what a
lunch break it would be as the different farm ladies would cook and
bring food out to board tables on saw horses sit up under the trees to
feed their boys and men. Big jugs of iced tea, friend chicken, new
taters and green beans out of the garden along with corn, fried okra,
cucumbers and sliced tomatoes, and desserts that you can only imagine.
Pies and Cakes and Cookies that were so good that right now, as I write
this, my mouth is waterin’. Eatin’ will never be that good again, but
it once was, and I was there to enjoy it.
All of this farm work was labor intensive, and very, very dirt and dust heavy. At the end of the work day, in August and September heat, after we had gone to the store at the top of the hill for our cold drink, we headed for the creek with a bar of soap and a towel to wash up and cool off. Nothing ever felt quit so good as that first naked plunge into the spring fed creek water when you were covered with hay dust.
On our Ozark farm we raised a variety of animals and therefore a variety of crops. We had Hereford cows, laying hens, Five gaited and three gaited horses that we showed at the horse shows and the fairs, a few pigs to butcher, a couple of goats and assorted wild animals that my brothers and I would find out in the woods and along the creek and bring home to make pets out of. At any given time you might find a collection of baby red or grey squirrels, flying squirrels, baby coons, baby rabbits, owls, hawks and so forth that we would feed and love and turn loose when they grew up to go back to live in the woods. A real life Disney adventure! Because of growing up like that I never was able to shoot Bambi, I just enjoy watching them as they eat all my dang horse hay.
Sadly, the modern Combine has replaced the old binders and thrashing machines, one man with modern equipment can do the work of twelve, the thrashing crews are long gone, farmers seldom get together to reap the crops of the whole community, the owners of the modern markets don’t chip up the big blocks of ice to keep the Grapette cold anymore, you would probably get arrested if you jumped in the creek, naked with a bar of soap, and …..THE THRESHING LUNCH, UNDER THE TREES IS GONE FOREVER!
Simple solutions for more simple times, but the pleasure of sharing a days work, together with your friends, neighbors and family members created memories that are still so strong in me today. The family farm is special and it created special people, people that work and are proud of it, a sense of neighborliness, a faith born of working the land and seeing the bounty of it, a toughness to keep going even when the weather, market, government and your own physical body seems to work against you. Yessir, we don’t give up, we get up and get going, still climbing the mountains after all these years. God Bless Us All and Keep Us Strong.
Stan Hitchcock
All of this farm work was labor intensive, and very, very dirt and dust heavy. At the end of the work day, in August and September heat, after we had gone to the store at the top of the hill for our cold drink, we headed for the creek with a bar of soap and a towel to wash up and cool off. Nothing ever felt quit so good as that first naked plunge into the spring fed creek water when you were covered with hay dust.
On our Ozark farm we raised a variety of animals and therefore a variety of crops. We had Hereford cows, laying hens, Five gaited and three gaited horses that we showed at the horse shows and the fairs, a few pigs to butcher, a couple of goats and assorted wild animals that my brothers and I would find out in the woods and along the creek and bring home to make pets out of. At any given time you might find a collection of baby red or grey squirrels, flying squirrels, baby coons, baby rabbits, owls, hawks and so forth that we would feed and love and turn loose when they grew up to go back to live in the woods. A real life Disney adventure! Because of growing up like that I never was able to shoot Bambi, I just enjoy watching them as they eat all my dang horse hay.
Sadly, the modern Combine has replaced the old binders and thrashing machines, one man with modern equipment can do the work of twelve, the thrashing crews are long gone, farmers seldom get together to reap the crops of the whole community, the owners of the modern markets don’t chip up the big blocks of ice to keep the Grapette cold anymore, you would probably get arrested if you jumped in the creek, naked with a bar of soap, and …..THE THRESHING LUNCH, UNDER THE TREES IS GONE FOREVER!
Simple solutions for more simple times, but the pleasure of sharing a days work, together with your friends, neighbors and family members created memories that are still so strong in me today. The family farm is special and it created special people, people that work and are proud of it, a sense of neighborliness, a faith born of working the land and seeing the bounty of it, a toughness to keep going even when the weather, market, government and your own physical body seems to work against you. Yessir, we don’t give up, we get up and get going, still climbing the mountains after all these years. God Bless Us All and Keep Us Strong.
Stan Hitchcock
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