Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

Bob cutting corn with dog Jack and cat Tom

And We Had A Garden………
 
You have probably heard many times that Thomas Jefferson wanted everyone to have their own farm. I believe he wanted that so people could be self-sustaining. One way to do that was by planting. We put out a garden on about half of the property at 309 South Water Street.  Daddy brought a tractor home and plowed the garden in early spring. One year he didn’t plow it, so my brother Bob dug the entire area up with a shovel. I don’t know how he did that. Of course, my brother had to push everything and had Betty and me holding earth worms as he laughed about it. When my mother came outside, she didn’t approve and gave her usual “woooo” of disapproval.
 
First the garden was plowed, then the clods broken up. Mama and Daddy usually made the rows and Betty and I had to get down in the dirt and cover up the seeds. Anyone who has done that never forgets the smell of the soil or what it is like to get down in it. As the song says, “Twas so good to be young then, To be close to the earth”.
 
We usually planted on cold evenings. However, my Dad always asked Betty and me to pull the weeds while he was at work. He would come home and say, “I thought you girls were going to pull the weeds today.” Our answer was always the same, “We did….until we got hot”. Whew, there were never any consequences.
 
We grew onions, lettuce, beets, green beans, tomatoes, corn and so on. My mother either canned or dried the results. She was very proud of her canning and preserving. We had an apple, cherry and pear tree in the yard as well as a Concord grape vine. Betty and I always had to help with picking, peeling and drying vegetables and fruits. One year we sat in the kitchen on our little chairs in front of a big tub of tomatoes. After Mama scalded them with boiling water, the three of us peeled and quartered them. I didn’t realize how much work we actually did until I started writing this. I thought it was fun though my forearms burned from tomato juice running down to my elbows.
 
My Dad never made a lot of money during his lifetime, but we never went hungry. We were like what Paul Harvey said, “We were poor, but we didn’t know it.”

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck