Dear Farmies...Visiting Horton Road Organics in the fall of 2011 and again in the spring of this year, I've seen both harvesting and planting seasons. As I looked over the fields in their precise rows or wandered the lane from packout to barn, memories of my own childhood would randomly pop up, such as: In 1947, the year I was born, my Dad was a master machinist, working in a factory 5-6 days a week, making precise engine and machine parts. He had been raised on a large Michigan farm, one of 8 children, so he also knew farming from the time he could walk. Mom stayed home to raise my younger sister and I, as did most women at that time. In the spring of 1950 we bought a house on one acre outside the Battle Creek city limits with livingroom, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a room that Dad made into a bathroom the first winter. So, for the first summer and fall we had our own "pee alley" and a bucket/chamber pot in the house during the night. Top priority that first summer was the garden. The back half-acre of grass and weeds was ploughed under and disc harrowed, then Dad laid out straight and even rows with stakes and string, and did all the planting with seeds. Even as I got older and was expected to help with household and outdoor chores, I was never allowed to plant - that was Dad's job. However, I was expected to weed, and it was a daunting task for a few years until I learned to recognize seedlings from weeds. Straw went down on the walking paths and Dad rototilled this in every so often, then new straw was laid. Vegetables included leaf lettuce, cabbage, carrots, green peppers, radishes, beets, potatoes, beans, peas, several squash and pumpkin varieties, tomatoes (always too many, I thought) and sweet corn (never enough). Fruits included rhubarb, strawberries, red raspberries, blackberries and watermelon. On the acre when we moved in were various fruit trees: six cherry, four apple, and one each of peach, sweet cherry, plum and pear.
Other expected summer and fall work was helping to harvest and preserve the produce. And even when the garden produced very well, Mom would still buy bushels of tomatoes and peaches. At that time only wealthy people had chest freezers so we canned 'til the cows came home. When Mom thought we had done enough stewed tomatoes, there was always tomato sauce and tomato juice to can! I remember peach juice and tomato juice running down my arms as Mom and I scalded and peeled. I was also in charge of pitting cherries with a little hand-crank machine that clamped onto our picnic table. I fed the cherries into a chute with one hand and cranked with the other hand, getting a good rhythm going. But, no matter how diligent I thought I had been, it was a family joke that with every cherry pie Mom made, if there was still a pit in a cherry, Dad always got that slice! We never composted the garden with table scraps, but each fall Dad would plant rye grass and each spring the rye, along with all stalks and stems left in the garden, would be ploughed and disc harrowed again. Soon the soil became rich, dark and friable. The table scraps went into a worm bed that Dad built for his favorite fishing bait - night crawlers. He dug a huge hole and faced all sides with parts of old doors, then refilled the hole, added worms, and closed the hinged top. The worms took care of composting. In later years when he no longer fished, Dad built a greenhouse on the back of the house and used this worm bed compost for his seedling and flower beds.
With much love and few complaints, this, and much more, was done by my parents and Lisa Roschek's maternal grandparents, Willard "Jess" and Elizabeth Harrison. Her Grandma Betty is especially happy, saying that Grandpa Jess is looking down, smiling, proud that his love of farming and the outdoors continues in his only granddaughter. Love, Hugs and Kisses to You All, Kathy Roschek. I'll be back....
