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My Grandmother who lives across the street from me is very sick and dying from ovarian cancer. A month ago she was driving her car and tonight we are all on death watch...taking turns giving her morphine as her lungs fill with fluid. Oh yes the end is nye.
But it is nothing to be sad about. My Grandmother lived a life that I feel was as close to self-sufficiency as you can get. They raised potatoes as a primary crop, then later switched to broiler chickens. That was their main commodity, but they always had 150 so of sheep, 2-6 dairy cows, sold replacement heifers, tried pigs, always had a greenhouse and harvested 25-30 full cords of firewood to burn in their main stove, a basement stove, the old potato house cellar stove and the greenhouses.
They also harvested wood and sold it to the papermills and sawmills in the winter, cut and harvested hay for all the animals, and made butter and cheese from the few dairy cows they had selling that to make a bit of cash. Naturally they had a 1 acre garden which they canned and preserved to live off from.
They did not do this for a few years either. They did this since childhood. And what a childhood it was. Her father died before she was even born and was raised through the depression by her mom and 6 other sisters...no boys. This meant they ate what others wouldn't. Her mom (my great grandmother) lived on handouts and learned to cook nasty food like cow jowls, cow tongue, beef heart and lamb liver just to survive. Saving plastic baggies by washing them out and rolling tin foil to save for later was just something she did long before recycling was popular. They simply had too.
And she was a better shot with a rifle then I was. Other hobbies included sewing and up until a month ago was busy using her foot powered treadle sewing machine to make pot holders and sell them at craft fairs to make more money that her $400 dollars a month in social security would allow. She could not draw any more then that, farmer wives did not earn much money working only a few weeks a year in the canning factories that used to thrive here, even though her long days of farming were far more work then the welfare recipients of today would ever dream of...and get paid more to do nothing. Funny how she never complained...
I doubt today many people could do what she did to get by...a truly self sufficient lifestyle that is. I know many talk about it, but the draw of the words lazy conveniences are just too much. No harm in that granted, but tonight...tonight one of the few that actually achieved true self sufficiency can finally rest. [SIZE=1]
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My Grandmother who lives across the street from me is very sick and dying from ovarian cancer. A month ago she was driving her car and tonight we are all on death watch...taking turns giving her morphine as her lungs fill with fluid. Oh yes the end is nye.
But it is nothing to be sad about. My Grandmother lived a life that I feel was as close to self-sufficiency as you can get. They raised potatoes as a primary crop, then later switched to broiler chickens. That was their main commodity, but they always had 150 so of sheep, 2-6 dairy cows, sold replacement heifers, tried pigs, always had a greenhouse and harvested 25-30 full cords of firewood to burn in their main stove, a basement stove, the old potato house cellar stove and the greenhouses.
They also harvested wood and sold it to the papermills and sawmills in the winter, cut and harvested hay for all the animals, and made butter and cheese from the few dairy cows they had selling that to make a bit of cash. Naturally they had a 1 acre garden which they canned and preserved to live off from.
They did not do this for a few years either. They did this since childhood. And what a childhood it was. Her father died before she was even born and was raised through the depression by her mom and 6 other sisters...no boys. This meant they ate what others wouldn't. Her mom (my great grandmother) lived on handouts and learned to cook nasty food like cow jowls, cow tongue, beef heart and lamb liver just to survive. Saving plastic baggies by washing them out and rolling tin foil to save for later was just something she did long before recycling was popular. They simply had too.
And she was a better shot with a rifle then I was. Other hobbies included sewing and up until a month ago was busy using her foot powered treadle sewing machine to make pot holders and sell them at craft fairs to make more money that her $400 dollars a month in social security would allow. She could not draw any more then that, farmer wives did not earn much money working only a few weeks a year in the canning factories that used to thrive here, even though her long days of farming were far more work then the welfare recipients of today would ever dream of...and get paid more to do nothing. Funny how she never complained...
I doubt today many people could do what she did to get by...a truly self sufficient lifestyle that is. I know many talk about it, but the draw of the words lazy conveniences are just too much. No harm in that granted, but tonight...tonight one of the few that actually achieved true self sufficiency can finally rest. [SIZE=1]
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Sounds like you have a lot of amazing memories to cherish. It's always sad when you lose someone you love.
I hope that while she was here, you learned as much as you could. Such skills are invaluable and rare in this day and age.
The story you shared of her is inspirational. I lost my Grandmother almost a year ago..age 97. That generation is the last to know how truly difficult life could be and yet they managed to make it so much better for their own children and grandchildren. My generation falls short in comparison.
May God take her gently and be with your family as you grieve in your loss.
BT,
I am sorry to hear of the loss to your family. I loved the story as you told it. It sounds like you have a lifetime of stories to share about your grandmother, and like she's lived her life to the fullest, while being a wonderful role model to the younger members of your family, such as yourself. I hope you and your family can celebrate this wonderful life that was well lived. God bless you all.
Oh yes, we have a a strong family here that surrounds her, both as we wait for her last breath and in how we live. They don't call this hill Brokentap hill for nothing...we all live here.
This is pretty common for us though, at least having family die at home. I don't know anyone in this family who has gone into a nursing home. My Grandfather had the distinction of dying in the same house he was born in. Not many people can say that anymore.
One such story starts with a rock that used to be where my house is located now. The key words being USED TO. Now my Grandfather liked two things...dynamite and hard apple cider, and typically he liked to combine the two extremes when he could. After farming around this rather big rock for years and years, he decided us boys should learn "the proper way to blow stumps and rocks from the ground," after all it was a dying farm skill.
Now we all know when working with high explosives its best to be in the proper frame of mind, but I am here to say that after getting pretty hard into the hard apple cider he always had brewed up, the day we blew up the rock was NOT one of those days for my grandfather.
He decided that simple dynamite was not going to cut it being a big rock and all, so we added some ammonium nitrate to our growing list of supplies, copper sulfate, diesel fuel and some blasting caps. In hind sight, any of the two explosives probably would have been enough, but this was no ordinary rock, and as I said, we had farmed around it for years...that day was our revenge!
Using the tractor to dig some holes around the rock, we added 7 sticks of dynamite, and then the concoction of fuel oil, ammonium nitrate and copper sulfate and inserted the blasting cap. No need to cover the rock with sand or a blasting mat or anything..."never did before" he said and then proceeded to run some speaker wire to a car battery. Now was the time we decided...time to blow the rock to smithereens.
Grandfather touched the wire ends to the battery cable and all of hades let loose from the earth. Instead of a big puff, there was an explosion as the dirt kicked out from each side and the rock began to go skyward. Unbeknown to us, the rock was not so big....well it was in size, but it was not very thick, being more of a slab of rock then a big boulder. So when the rather excessive charge went off, the flat rock caught the explosion underneath it rather flatly and instead of shattering, it hefted the entire thing right out of the ground in a nice circular arch.
Now if the power lines had not been there, it would have been just another rock-blasted-from-the-ground story, but the rock...having the aerodynamics of a flat slab of granite, decided that flying was not its forte and made an agreement with gravity to fall back to the earth. Now why it chose to do that as it hovered above the power lines we will never know, but after slicing through the power lines and the phone lines with amazing speed and accuracy, it landed on the shoulder of the road with a loud "womp". At the same time the explosion set up this shock wave that bent every tree over in a one mile area. It knocked our hats off as it rolled by us, and toppled several weak trees out in the forest.
With no power in the house, an explosion and a powerful shock wave buffeting the house, my Grandmother came out of the house...who incidentally had not been in the hooch and in no way, shape or form should have been considered jovial, and to top it all off was built like Napoleon; short, stocky and swearing like a sailor; she let loose with a tongue lashing that curled my Grandfather's hair...or would have been if he was not so darn happy from the aforementioned white lightning!
In the end we took the tractor and pushed the rock out of the ditch and onto the rock wall where it is too this day. Grandmother eventually grew hoarse from her never ending, not-so-jovial name calling, and the power company said they had never repaired power lines from a dynamited rock before, but were happy to do so provided we pay for all the expenses. And us boys...yes we learned the proper way to blow rocks from the ground for sure....now we only use SIX sticks of dynamite!
***
So in honor of her, let's keep this going because she loved a good story-from-the-farm as much as the next person...so
What are some of your stories from the farm...you know the ones you always talk about over Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner?
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