Day 31 - 2022: FARM

[AnasaziWrites]

The honor of penning the word "farm" today goes to my grandmother, who annotated the second photo in 1942, the year they bought it. At top, my father in the 1940's. Middle, the farm as they bought it. Bottom, a plate my mother painted, probably around 1950.

[Erica McPhee]

So beautiful @AnasaziWrites !

When I was in grade school (somewhere around age 8 or 9), in the summertime, there was a truck that used to go around the neighborhood and pick up kids in the back of the pickup to go to the farm in the next town over to pick peas. We were paid $.10 for every bushel we picked. Our parents had no idea where anyone was - ever. We would go outside in the morning and come home at dark. Those were the rules.  (Can you imagine any of this happening today?!)

So, when my brother jumped in the back of the pickup, I thought, ‘why not?!’ And into the pickup bed I went. After I had picked about $.15 cents worth of peas, it was about 95 degrees and humid as heck. The bugs were eating me alive and I was miserable. So I told my brother I was going to walk home (it was *only* like 10 miles down the road.)  I started walking … and got very lost. Bugs and bees were chasing me. There were no houses around. I finally found a house with two people outside and started crying and told them I was lost and asked to use their phone to call my mom.

Luckily my mom borrowed a neighbor’s car to come and get me. That was the first time I was ever on a farm. And was not the last time I ever got a spanking. 

[K-2]

@Erica McPhee and @AnasaziWrites - My mother's father farmed the Irvine Ranch back when it was just a wide spot in the road.  After the Irvine Company sold all the land to developers, my grandfather went to farm tomatoes in the Coachella Valley.  My youngest uncle inherited that farm, and all us cousins would work on it through the long hot summers, getting the plants ready for the winter harvest.  Friends, while I love me a luscious, vine ripe tomato, I am allergic to tomato plants.  the itching....  (Erica, I guess at least it wasn't humid).  There was nothing picturesque about that farm: 2 acres of hydroponic pipes in the desert, with a barn and a trailer.  It also turns out that I do not have any pictures of Coco, the farm pony, or Devil, the doberman-mutt, or Six-Toed White Kitty.

So here's a scene from a photo I took this summer up at Housesteads Roman Fort (or Vercovicium, as they called it) on Hadrian's Wall.  Still farming sheep, after 1900 years.

[InkyFingers]

Not much farm experience except learning about crop rotation, eating field rats, a python that devoured several ducks and chicken in our chicken pen, and fresh caught fish by the creek.

[tiffany.c.a]

My mother grew up on a sharecropping farm. I have no experience farming, but I followed my mother’s suit as an avid gardener.

It has been an encouraging month and great thread. Although I didn’t post much of my work, I managed to sit down and do some type of work with ink on most days this month (except 3), sometimes just chilling out in my art journal. And here’s how far I got with that page I started of random words, to flourish. It’s practice, so I guess it’s OK that sometimes I bit off more than I could chew.    I do plan to finish it.

Most importantly, I think I made some progress in practicing more regularly. Setting a goal for Inktober was the momentum I needed.

I’ve very much enjoyed seeing everyone’s work, and it was fun to check in each day and see what everyone did or had to say.

[AnasaziWrites]

So beautiful @AnasaziWrites !

When I was in grade school (somewhere around age 8 or 9), in the summertime, there was a truck that used to go around the neighborhood and pick up kids in the back of the pickup to go to the farm in the next town over to pick peas. We were paid $.10 for every bushel we picked. Our parents had no idea where anyone was - ever. We would go outside in the morning and come home at dark. Those were the rules.  (Can you imagine any of this happening today?!)

So, when my brother jumped in the back of the pickup, I thought, ‘why not?!’ And into the pickup bed I went. After I had picked about $.15 cents worth of peas, it was about 95 degrees and humid as heck. The bugs were eating me alive and I was miserable. So I told my brother I was going to walk home (it was *only* like 10 miles down the road.)  I started walking … and got very lost. Bugs and bees were chasing me. There were no houses around. I finally found a house with two people outside and started crying and told them I was lost and asked to use their phone to call my mom.

Luckily my mom borrowed a neighbor’s car to come and get me. That was the first time I was ever on a farm. And was not the last time I ever got a spanking. 

@Erica McPhee

Great story. For me at that age, it was picking strawberries at 8 cents a box (plus all you wanted to eat), 64 cents a crate. If the berries were good, one could pick about a crate an hour. No worries about child labor laws back then.

[AnasaziWrites]

@Erica McPhee and @AnasaziWrites - My mother's father farmed the Irvine Ranch back when it was just a wide spot in the road.  After the Irvine Company sold all the land to developers, my grandfather went to farm tomatoes in the Coachella Valley.  My youngest uncle inherited that farm, and all us cousins would work on it through the long hot summers, getting the plants ready for the winter harvest.  Friends, while I love me a luscious, vine ripe tomato, I am allergic to tomato plants.  the itching....  (Erica, I guess at least it wasn't humid).  There was nothing picturesque about that farm: 2 acres of hydroponic pipes in the desert, with a barn and a trailer.  It also turns out that I do not have any pictures of Coco, the farm pony, or Devil, the doberman-mutt, or Six-Toed White Kitty.

So here's a scene from a photo I took this summer up at Housesteads Roman Fort (or Vercovicium, as they called it) on Hadrian's Wall.  Still farming sheep, after 1900 years.

@K-2
Another good farm story. those who have never worked a farm rarely realize how much work it is, and it's never ending (less in deep winter, though--time for looking over the seed catalogs and repairing things). My dad tapped maple trees in the spring--now that was hard work, and boiling the sap with wood that you  chopped and split the summer or two before as fuel really made that syrup sweet.

Nice sheep.

[AnasaziWrites]

Not much farm experience except learning about crop rotation, eating field rats, a python that devoured several ducks and chicken in our chicken pen, and fresh caught fish by the creek.

@InkyFingers
The fish sounds good, but rats?

[InkyFingers]

@AnasaziWrites whatever that we snared or grown we ate. Tropical and midway up the mountain, all natural.

[Lucie Y]

Today I printed the Engrosser section of the Zanerian manual, to try to straighten up my script.
The picture hurts my eyes, there's no harmony here. But hey, now I know what to work on.

I loved reading everyone's farm stories, they are so precious!

For me, as a healthcare professional, I have worked mostly in large cities but sometimes way out in the countryside. In the city the very old patients are often frail and ill.
Now, the elderly in the countryside, that was a whole other story. I had a number of huge, broad shouldered, 80 year olds with big strong arms coming in the hospital with chest pain, being like "I can't stay long, I have to return to the farm".
It was a great experience working with them, and food for thought too!

[Erica McPhee]

As uninspired as I was writing this word, this has been the best thread to read!

@K-2 Love the sheep! Beautiful! And I am allergic to raw tomatoes, too! Can’t even touch them. But I LOVE them cooked. Apparently there is a chemical in them that dissipates when they are cooked and a lot of folks are like that. I find it so funny the thought of eating a raw tomato makes me want to curl up and die, but I devour tomato sauce, tomato soup, etc.

I also just realized I have been tagging the wrong person in all of our thread! LOL! Without the dash.

@InkyFingers - it was the python for me.    Great progress throughout Inktober for you!

Yay @tiffany.c.a ! Happy to see your beautiful work. Really looks lovely! Well done!

Beautiful @Lucie Y ! Just superb. My grandfather was like that, too. If something was really painful, he would laugh at the ridiculousness of it. 

[InkyFingers]

@Erica McPhee Oh Phyton's skin went to the market for cash.  Phyton became soup for the fiesta, all neighboring farm family came.  Along with all it's content.  After devouring four adult chickens, two ducks, it rolled into a ball around the center pole holding the pen up.  Farmers were poor, and anything this size were shared, proteins for the children.  It was a blessing for us.

[Erica McPhee]

@InkyFingers - That is fascinating! What does it taste like? When we lived in Florida we went to a place which served all kinds of critters. I didn’t have snake but I did have alligator and squirrel. It’s a frequent joke here but - tastes like chicken.