The Little Farm in the Big Valley

By J. Higgins

First there was Little House, then there was Little Farm. Laura Ingalls Wilder's saga continues into the twentieth century with The Little Farm in the Big Valley: a story for baby boomers and other generations as well!

GO into the mind of the child in this childhood memoir.

SEE the "play" and the "work" among three generations in the rural heartland of America.

GO along with the boys on their country adventures.

SEE how things unfold as their family grows.

Here is a memoir of a childhood like many others and, still, unique in its setting. With the disappearance of small farms, the generations' way of life disappears as well. It is only to be recalled by the written word and forms of media. Such is the purpose of the author, Eric Weidler, who thoroughly relates his early years on that "little farm."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514401934

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Copyright © 2015 by Eric Weidler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/28/2015

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Contents

Author’s Introduction

1944

1944 (Ma Jean’s Home Farm)

Flashback

Ma Jean’s Family, 1944 (Cont.)

1945

Joseph Was Born in October 1949

January 1951: The Next One

Hired Help

1952: Cornstalks

March 5, 1953: Still Another

The Straight and Narrow

Hurricane Hazel, 1954

Butchering at Grandma’s, 1954

Scary Moments

Rocket Science

Depression

Ma’s Old Childhood Book

Tar Trouble

Entertainment

Background Check

Charlie Brings Chuckles

Where Junk Was Dumped

Naming Places

Ma Jean Is Special

Grandpa, the Real Bugger

Grandpa’s Learning

Grandpa’s Good Old Days

Privacy Please

The Tobacco Cellar

Spring Garden

The Unwelcome Audience—Once More

A Dusty Ride and a Hiding Place

Making Use of Grapes

Shoo, Fly, Shoo

September 20, 1957

A Forbidden Flag

Common Sense and Balcony Chairs

Soldier Memories

Letters to Home

Memories: Some Lost, Some Remembered

More Farm Fun

The Accident

Schooldays

A Lasting Friendship

First-Grade Experiences

Have Gun Will Travel

Two Bicycles

Outdated and Done For

More Outdated and Done For: Learning, Lost to Time

Back in Time

A Cabin by the River

A Traveling Herd

Dogs and Cats

Farming Friend

Chirpin’ Peeps

An Unlucky Strike

A Lucky Fowl

Well, What to Say?

The Crossword and the Escaped Horses

Pulling a Wagon and Driving a Tractor

Stan’s Fall

Stan’s Other Fall (Seven Years Later)

The Fire

Making Use of the Fowl Creature

Things in the Ground

A Challenging Hike

Steaming the Beds

Growing Plants

Pullin’ Plants

No Weeds, Please

Summer Work

Baling Time with Boundless Bales

Toppin’ Tobacco

Baling Hay

Before Harvest

Some History at Supper

Taking in Tobacco

Taters To Be Dug

The Bread Man

More Tobacco

Harvesting Fish

Mrs. Z. and the Tom

Silo Filling Time

Hanging and Falling

The Comics

Reading a Classic

Exploring a Room

Cherry Pickin’

Back to the Patch

A Trip to the Cousins

The Other Cousins

Supper for Spiders

Horn Clippings

Celery in the Cellar

Stocking Up on Beef

Truisms and Warts

More Philosophical Thinking

To Grandmother’s House We Go

Eric’s Favorite

Bobby’s Visit

Screaming for Ice Cream

Grandma’s Visit

Playing Croquet

Playing a Meadow Game of Croquet

Cookies and Cakes

Electricity’s Gone

More Winter Woes

Snowbound

Useless

Easter

Charlie’s Departure

Neighbors and a Roundabout Bus Ride

Resolution

Dandelion Salad and Strawberry Shortcake

Asparagus Planting and Picking

Grandfather Clock

Summertime

Raspberry Hill

Summer Bible School

Hard Cider

Hospital Bound

More Trouble

A Birth and a Death

A New President

November’s Not Just Another Day in School

Finale

Afterword

For Mother, Ma Jean

This story is true. The names may have been changed, but the happenings among persons, living and now passed, are real. Though the dialogue is fictitious, for the most part, the characters have been portrayed as the author remembers. The events and characters and their traits are as they have been in the author’s life from the midtwentieth century. The author’s birth—midcentury as well—and the following childhood years are portrayed as lived on the family farm in Landis Valley. That was the Big Valley, a few miles northeast of Lancaster in the state of Pennsylvania.

Author’s Introduction

Unlike the Wilder family of the Midwest, ours was the result of a long line of the youngest in each succeeding generation who remained to work the home farm. Our family farm was only three miles from the original farm settled by my five great-grandfathers, Michael, an immigrant, as others who felt the misery of the Thirty Years’ War that ravaged Europe. In the 1720s, he settled along the Conestoga River in a forest of virgin timber. Four generations of the youngest son remained until the bottle got the best of the fifth. He died in the middle of Prohibition, perhaps a fitting tribute to a time of collective effort to end the happy hour. Most of his nine children remained in Lancaster County and farmed somewhere nearby. By 1930, about one out of every four Americans was still involved in farming; and that’s the year my grandfather, Rufus Guy, bought our farm, one of many among the Houstetters, a family whose kin rivaled the number of Landis kin in what became Landis Valley. Though at this writing its land has become residential, about 30 percent is still being farmed, and nearly all of that is in farm preservation.

My brothers, sister, and I were raised on the farm. We weren’t born there as my father and mother were on their parents’ farm, but our earliest knowledge comes from the farm in the big valley. Mother, Ethel Jean, was a nurse who trained over a three-year period and then worked at Lancaster General Hospital a few more years. After that, marriage and family took over and nursing now had another meaning: nourishing and nurturing seven children. Pa Herb was engrained in farm life’s endless, mostly mindless tasks since childhood, having had only a reprieve from it with three years in the service during World War II. He loved baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals in particular. The Gashouse Gang, as they were called, captured the imagination of this naive farm boy whose nights were spent listening to their broadcast games. Once all the farmwork was done, Guy, my grandfather, took his boys to Shibe Park in Philadelphia to see a game. This excited my father, Herb, and his brothers, Paul and Earl, to the utmost; and their fondest memories are of that time.

Though ours was the next generation’s time, for the most part, my home and surroundings in the big valley were the same as my father. Machinery, bigger crop yields, bigger herds, and less manual labor were becoming more and more of what was expected of today’s farmer, and Pa was determined to survive on his 103 acres. He would make do with whatever weather and minimal crop revenues came his way. He had it harder than us. He would readily remind us of this and that the school of hard knocks was simply accepted in his day. Any complaints of hard work on another’s part would only give him license to repeat his claim that others—including his boys—just didn’t know how tough things were in Depression times.

My brothers and I were more impressed with his being in the war and those experiences that the younger generation just never knew. He told us stories of it and only once mentioned that he took little thought whether he lived or died over there. He was young and needed by Uncle Sam, so off he went. There was no hesitation for the Greatest Generation. Even those who weren’t in harm’s way served through rationing and watching loved ones leave, not knowing if they’d return.

1944

The sun was setting in an orange glow surrounded by light turquoise blue. It was another cold evening on the farm. Geese were flying overhead in a southerly direction and probably no farther than a low bank area on the Conestoga River. An aging guy, whose name was also Guy, walked toward the farm house, done with the night’s milking and ready for his pipe and a warm stove. He was in a good mood by having just purchased an electric milking machine with his youngest son doing most of the work. However, Guy was the type whose mood would not go unnoticed easily, even in a household where emotions were not demonstrative.

Oh, somebody’s gotta get coal up. Well, guess there’s enough left.

Lands, I told Earl this forenoon, but he went off to play ball, said Clara, his wife of thirty years.

Well, is the coffee on?

He was up from the cellar in no time with a bucket of coal and spread it evenly on top of the fading glow of coals in the center of browned lumps of used ashen coals.

Guess I’ll have to riddle this. Fitting the handle into the turning post, he cranked the handle back and forth and watched the coals shift lower as the used clumps of ash fell into the hidden box below.

Dad, we’ve got a letter from Herb. He’s been followin’ all the bombed places. Says they’re headed toward Belgium.

Roosevelt said no American boy’d set foot on Europe’s soil. Huh, look at ’em now.

Did you know Miriam’s about to have another? Land’s sake, she’s busy enough with the girl, isn’t she?

You’ve done well for yourself. Now Mirum’s a mom for sure. Hey, do we have any canned peaches tonight? Shenk’s startin’ up some more trees this year, I hear.

No more, Dad.

Little did any family member know that in less than ten years, Miriam, Guy and Clara’s daughter would die silently from the results of cancer, leaving a widower and a boy and girl. Like so many other young men, Herb came home near the end of ’45 and married three years later. He continued to farm the home farm while his older and younger brothers married and farmed also: Paul, near Elizabethtown, and Earl, near Campbelltown in Lebanon County.

1944 (Ma Jean’s Home Farm)

Ah-k, I told ya not to leave the water outside when it’s freezin’.

Well, bringin’ it in just makes things wet. Ellen’s hardly got the fire goin’ anyway.

Chust set ’em aside inside the door, Leon.

Dad’s been sayin’ he’s goin’ to put up a tobacco shed in a few years. The price per pound isn’t good ’nuf for that.

Well, he thinks he’s gonna do it big. We’ll see.

Son Leon and Ma Carrie just finished their morning greetings while Jean and her sisters, Ellen and Virgie, were doing their chores. Ellen went out to gather corncobs to help start the fire. Virgie gathered the clothes for washing and then cracked a few eggs in the pan. Jean was busy looking at a box camera that a friend let her borrow. She only put it down when Ma Carrie called out for her. Not much time for daydreaming in this family.

Flashback

Christian Becker Hess was given three dollars to stay out of the Union Army. His father needed him at home on the farm in 1862. Around 1905, Christian’s grandson Myer survived when a batch of bad oysters were consumed one hot summer day and caused a younger sibling’s death. In a day when there were no true health and sanitation regulations, oysters were cheap and a bad bunch was not uncommon.

Ma Jean’s Family, 1944 (Cont.)

Like his brothers, Myer, the oldest sibling, was now a farmer for almost thirty years—and with a family of five. His oldest son was married with a child of his own and farming the Barr girls’ farm, the very next-door neighbor’s spread. Virgie, Jean, Ellen, and Leon completed the home family.

I’ve been nailin’ that wall together in that hog pen two days now. One of these years we’ll give up butcherin’. Just don’t need all that meat when there’s these newfangled store keeps with refrig’rators, Myer said.

Carrie continued, Say, could Jean pick up some sugar in Lancaster? We’re all out and I need some for rhubarb sauce.

Is she about done with trainin’? How long does it take to be a nurse?

Ah-k, well, she said all she does is carry bedpans and such!

More likely I should invest in a new hangin’ shed. With farmin’ for the Barr girls, there’s just too much to put up and the old corn crib just doesn’t hold enough.

Did you hear me say ’bout the sugar?

Yeah, tell Ellen to write Tip.

Her name’s Jean!

The nineteen year-old Tip, Ethel Jean, would eventually go on to have more children than all her siblings had in later years. She had seven in total. She was devout in attending church not only on Sundays, but also Wednesday night prayer meetings and other church functions like the WMC: Women’s Missionary Council. According to Hubby Herb, Jean was fussy about things. Perhaps there was a time when he expected otherwise? He also said that since she had so many children, she became tolerant. This balanced things out for Pa Herb who himself claimed to be balanced—except in his preference to baseball teams.

Appreciation of parents doesn’t readily appear in the children until they themselves become adults. I have a better view now, as Brother Joe would say. His brothers and sister would eventually say the same.

Pa Herb would grasp the situation rather quickly at times, especially the nature of mature folks. Women are partial to little helpless children, tolerant of old people, and given to whims and atmospherics. Now, men—maybe I should say boys—well, they can do what they do anywhere. I guess you could say they’re tolerant too in their own way … seems they brush themselves off without a grudge. Lady can forgive her kin . . . doubtful anyone else though.

What Pa’s words meant to even an adolescent in our family seemed irrelevant most of the time. One has to live life, experience it, and then, it’s an Oh yeah, you have something there moment: true words from a philosophical father.

Ma’s tribute must continue here. She quelled many a hurt and even kept Herb on even keel when he couldn’t take what life was dishing out. Ma Jean had to tolerate an old kitchen for more than two decades. When daughter Julie visited the Glick’s Amish farmhouse, she commented that their kitchen was quite modern compared to Jean’s. The Amish were the ones that were supposed to be old-fashioned! Ma, nonetheless, tithed on Sunday and helped a poverty-stricken divorced mother on Millport Hill when she saw someone worse off than she. Unlike many of today, she had no feeling of entitlement, looking out for the needs of others before herself. A tribute to a woman who wasn’t afraid to wear herself out and wanted to give life all she had. A more giving farmer’s wife you would never find: a big heart, a big garden, and a big family in the little farm in the big valley.

1945

When our pa, Herb, returned in ’45, the farm was different. It now had an electric milking system installed and a tractor to take the place of mules that had been replaced completely in the early war years. The work didn’t stop and, if anything, became harder because modern methods meant more production and manual labor was needed as always. Pa was newly married in 1948, and without full-time hired help, Grandpa and Grandma were around for one more year and then moved up to their other son’s farm before buying a house in Neffsville for his retirement home.

Grandpa had bought a farm with a hesitant down payment in ’48. He was thinking that one of his sons would farm and pay off the mortgage. That working part was completed by his son, Uncle Earl, and his wife, Aunt Elva, who were two mild-mannered and hearty farm folk. They stuck to it through thick and thin and mostly slim pickin’s. Beans, that is. Early on, they lost money on a crop of beans and sought out seasonal help like others bred to the land.

Guy’s sons were lucky to have a neighboring farmer or drifter who was willing to help every now and then. Pa Herb was lucky on that account as you will see.

Joseph Was Born in October 1949

Enter the firstborn: Joe.

Around that time, another came to the farm. Sammy Cole was a lone traveler, whose livelihood was travel by foot here and there, just being content to live a life from road to boxcar and back again. That is, a life highlighted with stops where whosoever would house him and provide some work every now and then.

"You know who I am, don’t you? Look here. See this clippin’? The Arkansas Traveler pictures me here!"

"Wow! You got miles in back of you, comin’ all the way from there! Sammy Cole, King of the Hobos! Well, you really spread yourself out. That’d be gittin’ ’round!’ Pa had a knack for making a stranger feel special.

Yeah, guess there ain’t many like me ’round anymore. I’ll be glad to stick ’round and help ’round here if you have work.

Yes, well, we’ve plenty of that!

Pa appreciated his help until one day he discovered Sammy had a double rupture and it slowed him down to a snail’s pace. He saw Sammy’s handicap after a day of throwing some hay bales. He came back and could barely bend over.

Burns, Herb, he said before explaining any further. That was it.

Apparently, he got it from strenuous work in a previous place, only to have it agitated again and again. He refused any help from the doctor, but a few days later, he asked to be taken to the train station. He didn’t need a ticket, just the sight of an empty freight train headed for parts unknown. A man satisfied with his fate, making do as best as he could with whatever life dished out. Time for a little rest on a train ride, as he put it.

About a year later, Herb was lucky. He had a second son, Eric: perhaps some future free help on the farm? Not right away, though. First, there would be more nurturing by the former nurse.

January 1951: The Next One

My, just look at his little feet!

The little darling’s a little slow. Thought for a minute there he wouldn’t take to nursing. Mother Jean had to prod the infant to get him going for the first few days.

Well, born the first day of the first month of the fifty-first year of the twentieth century!

That’s not so slow, is it?

That baby girl was the first one, though. She beat him out by fifteen minutes.

Herb looked on as his sister Miriam and Jean talked on. He had a final word as he headed out to the tobacco shed to finish stripping a load of twenty-five laths.

Thanks for the birthday card, Mim. It’s nice you still send one.

Herb had spent his army years at Fort Sill and Germany during the ’43–’45 years and was glad to be home. The work at home was not what he looked forward to, but another hired man was soon on the scene to help.

Ya know, I wanted to join the WACs, but my mom wouldn’t let me, Jean continued.

With this trouble in Korea, it never ends, does it?

The future never has a guarantee on life. Miriam’s war hero brother would outlive her by sixty-plus years as well as his older brother, Paul. The older toddler, Joe, and the little feet infant sibling would grow up and serve in the military after Vietnam, but never on the front lines as those of the greatest generation.

We never fully realize we’re all just a bunch of sittin’ ducks, Pa Herb once said.

Life is short—even at its longest. Most certainly … will be our exit … but who knows where or when.

Hired Help

A month later, a new helping hand came on the scene in one of Charles Marson. Charles was thought to help out for possibly a few months or more, but he stayed for more than a few years. A total of ten years on the little farm was more like it.

Pa Herb was lucky, in a sense, because Charlie was the new help and he—not Pa—decided he’d stay years instead of weeks or months. Of course, help was seldom, if ever, refused on the farm. The usual crops were raised like others in the valley: corn, hay, soybeans, barley, wheat, tobacco, and a steadily increasing herd of dairy cows.

Shenk’s Truck Farm next door was different, however. Peaches, apples, celery, strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, and sour cherries were the main crops there. Later on, more acreage on that farm was used for corn, soybeans, and rye.

After a rather humble start, Charles began to voice his opinion on the problems of the world and include his misery as well. Pa needed his help so he tolerated the continuous ranting, verbal expression at the supper table included. Charlie was sensitive enough to know when to button up, though. A weary glare from Herb and conversation switched gears. Ma Jean was more than willing to feed Charlie, and so he stuck around for all those years. In the summer, he slept in the barn’s upper straw loft; and in the winter, the tobacco cellar with his cot next to the coal stove.

Man, that was cold last night! I woke up twice and moved closer to the fire both times.

Yeah, well, it’s winter.

Is Jean gonna help take some down today. Charlie liked some help along with his help. The cured tobacco needed to be brought down to the cellar for dampening.

Naw, she thinks Guy’ll stop by. Can you get on the second level and catch ’em?

You know I get shaky climbin’ high up on any o’ those rails. I’ll be shiverin’ all the while too. Smiling, Charlie added, Maybe if the missus has dessert tonight, I’d give a shot at it.

We’ll have dessert no matter what. Well, there’s nothin’ to it up on the rails. Jus’ keep your balance. We’ll take two laths at a time. You can catch ’em if I drop ’em from above.

I may drop a few for sure.

No matter. The leaves are damp enough as is. They won’t crumble.

Pa was a good listener, but he would be half-amused, half-irritated by Charlie’s refusal to do certain jobs. He was pleased that he cleaned the drop, however. There wasn’t a dirtier, smellier, unpleasant job on the farm. Being minus an automatic barn cleaner, it was shovel-to-wheelbarrow the manure away every day during the winter and quite nearly as often in the summer.

Hired help on the farm was unpredictable. Pa might get the neighbor, Ray Garner, if he was around, or he might catch wind of some drifting loner looking for a place to stay like Charlie. The meal or two that Sammy Cole had was but a drop in the bucket compared to what Charles would consume. The way to a drifter’s heart is through his stomach.

The dessert that night was lemon sponge pie. Everyone’s favorite.

1952: Cornstalks

The most elder, Rufus Guy, just walked in the door of the farmhouse one evening.

What is Herb doin’ with all that corn? Is it shucked?

Yeah, he wants to put it in the silo, but nobody’s around with a chopper.

Well, he can’t let it sit there!

Some’s still green. He might just as well throw it in for the steers.

Jean would’ve gone on with the conversation, but Guy was already out the door seeing about business.

We paid good for that silo. Now we can’t put it to use.

He took one glance at the cornstalks, some grouped in bundles and others on the ground, and noticed his two grandsons playing among them.

Just look at ’em. They don’t need toys.

Guy habitually talked to himself when no one was around. The boys were laughing as they pushed the partially dry stalks down then jumped into them as the other ones fell down on top, bumping with crackling, crunching leaves, busting and bending all around. Some were falling apart as they twirled the stalks back and forth, the two toddlers amazed of taking control of something taller than them. There was further giddy giggling when the boys decided to throw the light stalks at each other. Joe and Eric took joy in seeing the other laughing at the sensation of a calamity of cascading corn.

Mother Jean would retrieve her boys for nap time and perhaps take one herself, for now she was pregnant with her third child. First, however, she wanted to take a snapshot of the boys with her used black box camera.

March 5, 1953: Still Another

Stanley Guy was born and named as such by a Cardinals favorite of Pa’s: Stan Musial. The Guy was, of course, after Grandpa Guy who was honored to have his namesake continued on in a grandson.

Baby making was becoming a norm for Ma Jean now. The former nurse continued nursing duties as such and thought that the more, the merrier. Everyone was welcoming more hands to do the work of the future. The bond between Joe and Eric was already developed, and a young infant around the house was another object of fascination for them. Usually it was a bug or animal that got their attention, and now there was something else.

It was the younger brother Stan, though, that would be most interested in those bugs and animals. From the earliest, he was always about exploring and looking for other living things. Of course, the first grasshopper that he was lucky enough to catch also went into his mouth and down his esophagus. Jean saw it all happen and just couldn’t reach the toddler in time to stop it.

The Straight and Narrow

The brothers’ normal routine was short-lived when Mom and Dad took them along to hear a speaker who would both inspire and make the straight and narrow path seem more palatable. A part-time preacher with a gift of words asserting to all whose ears were waiting to hear was only a three-mile drive away on Becker Road. Jean thought some inspiration was needed for both her and hubby. No time for money for a babysitter. The three children would come along and sit quietly—for the most part. The two boys didn’t remember much from that event and, of course, the infant—nothing at all. They only wondered why so much attention was given to such a stranger outside the coziness of regular family members.

And the spirit moved upon the face of the deep, quoted the pastor.

Ma Jean pondered the verse while Herb shifted in his chair, wondering how long the little sermon would last.

Little Eric with little feet wandered about the