Vintage ladies on the farm

[Vintage Rose]

I was on another topic and saw that there is a fedora lounge member that does vintage and farms! YAY! So, I thought I'd start this thread. My grandparents on either side were upper midwestern farmers. One Grandma had 11 kids (German Catholic family. Yet, I just found out, she still set her hair in pincurls! Awesome! So, if anyone has any family stories about being a lady and a mom on the farm in the golden era, OR how it's done now that would be so interesting. I spent some time as a child on a little hobby farm (we had sheep, and cows, and chickens) and want to get back to that someday. I want to live sustainably and do a lot of the old school things (I can my veggies, use cloth diapers, embroider tea towels, etc.), but I want to figure out how to do that while still enjoying some of the glamour of the era. If this topic is too off the wall, let me know! I'm so excited to have a place to talk about all of this stuff!

 

[lframe]

My Grandma grew up on as next to youngest of 10! She set her hair in pin curls every night and used to set mine when I was a little girl with strips of brown paper from grocery sacks. But? She always wore her lipstick and had her hair done. I need to get some photos so I can post them!

 

[Vintage Rose]

Photos would be awesome. My mom and grandma have all the photos so I can't post any. However, there was a sweet one with Grandma and Grandpa sitting next to each other. He had a nice summer hat on and she had the classic 40's pincurled 'do. There was another one of grandpa (young, too, maybe 20?) proud as a peacock playing his accordion. It was the cool instrument to play in his neck of the woods. They both grew up in the depression on farms, and then went straight to a farm after marriage. The little town they lived near was vibrant (as most were then) and had a movie theater. Also, apparently THE thing to do with your date was roller skating. I don't know how much fun they had once they were hitched and had a family. They were not wealthy farmers and I've heard stories of how hard they worked. I need to give her a call and ask a bunch o' questions if she's not too tired.

 

[Land-O-LakesGal]

Vintage Rose I just made my first batch of pickles last week. I used to ride horses and spent much of my youth in a barn with horses. I would love to raise chickens but my city won't let us have any farm animals and I read through the ordinariness hoping for a loop hole and it specifically says raising poultry is unlawful. Grr.... I do garden but I did tone it back a bit the last few years as we have lots of land and little kids and I just couldn't keep up and the said needed work but I plan to expand as I get things under control. My husband and I would both like to get a vintage tractor one of these days.

 

[Vintage Rose]

Oh, you would love where we went yesterday. We went to a threshing festival. We go every year. They have a tractor parade each year featuring different tractors. I love the ones from around 1940. They even had some art deco styling (everything was better looking then!). There was even a Porsche tractor (!!! I kid you not). I know that whether or not a tractor is "purty" should be irrelevant, but what can I say?

Good call on the garden, I tried to do too much this year and consequently I have cabbage worms and blight and stressed vegetables. That is one of the things that fascinates and inspires me about my grandma and the gals from her generation. She had a big enough garden to literally feed them all year. They had a root cellar, too. I remember her getting taters from the basement in the summer from last year's garden.

Our city is no on chickens, too (BAH HUMBUG). It's especially sad because we are so rural, they used to have chickens, and someone has them now grandfathered in, but only for his house. The city council is thinking about it. Yay to pickles!! I think I'll have enough cukes soon. I wish I had enough to do sweet gherkins, but I don't have the space to get enough of the little buggers. Something they did in the forties that I think would be awfully fun is to have canning parties. I know a friend and I are going to can tomatoes this way this year. Jo-Ann's had a pattern sale and I bought one for late 40's aprons. I'm going to make one up so I can look spiffy while I'm canning and protect my clothes. Once again, EVERYTHING looked better then. I have a plain modern apron and it just does the job, but I feel like a giant frump in it. However, I would get excited to get going if I had on my swanky apron. Almost like a housewife uniform.

Well, enough rambling, all this talk about gardens...I've got some weeding and harvesting to accomplish!

 

[Land-O-LakesGal]

a canning Party would be great my family stopped canning stuff before I was born so I started this year on my own from what I could gleam off the internet. You should stop into the victory garden thread there was some really interesting stuff in it about bag growing potatoes that I would like to try next season.

I agree about the chickens too my neighbor who grew up right across the street said they used to have chickens and was suprised that the city has banned so much. I think they are so behind the times and hoighty toighty. The economic times is calling for more self sufficientency and home growing eggs is a good start.

 

[Mojito]

Oh, I love this topic! My grandmother, born in 1908, grew up on a large "Station" (a property) near Oberon in the Blue Mountains. We used to talk for hours about it! About how going to a party meant strapping a bag with the dress to the side of the horse and riding there...about being so keen to get her hair bobbed in the 1920s...about how she used to want to be out with her father, grandfather and their stockman working with the livestock, but had to work with the rest of the women on the never-ending sewing and cooking. They had freezing winters, and life centred around a massive fireplace. One half of the room was boiling, one half was frozen. And all the polishing etc...! With all the hard physical work the men (and women!) were doing, they had to supply huge repasts of food.

She learned to ride as a little girl - was basically put on the back of a horse as they rode out to get the mail, and learned by being "shook" into it.

Here's a photo of her in the 1920s...she's wearing pretty thoroughly practical, warm clothes with that knitwear and beanie. I love the jodhpurs! And oh, goodness - that horse has clearly not being rugged He looks like a bear!

 

[Stray Cat]

Lovely color of the picture. My favorite.. sometimes, I switch my camera to make my photos more vintage.. and I switch it to "sepia".
..and everything else.. (the sweater is GREAT)

 

[sheeplady]

I grew up on a farm (sheep, geese, chickens, ducks, etc.). Right now I live in 1950s suburbs (our house was built in 1942), so no chickens for us. We have a decent garden (12 raised beds and 25 pots), but it is smaller than I would like (our neighbors have trees). We have three apple trees that we planted too (in the front yard- lol). I can't wait to get someplace with a bit more space to have some animals.

I wish that more of you ladies lived close to me so we could do canning parties. That would be wonderful.

All four of my grandparents grew up on farms. My father's parents farmed until the late 1950s when they could no longer afford to do so. My grandmother was a teacher (special education) and they grew crops, fruit, had a cow, and had chickens. Before and during the war, they had sheep. Because my grandparents were older when they had my father and his twin sister, they decided to get rid of the sheep and just concentrate on fruit and crops, have enough chickens for egg money, and a cow for their own milk.

My mother's mother hated the farm she grew up on and hated farming, so she and my grandfather lived in the suburbs. My mother, however, loved going to her grandmother's farm in the 1950s when she was a child/ teen, and that is one of the reasons why my parents started farming.

 

[Stray Cat]

Hmm. I still live among animals (since I live in a farm-household).
Vegetable garden, chickens, piggies.. you name it, I have it! lol

 

[Land-O-LakesGal]

My moms parents were both farm families, but even my dads family in the city kept chickens and rabbits when he was growing up. And they all had gardens even my parents had a big garden when I was growing up but she didn't can she just froze everything and kept it in a large deep freeze.

 

[MarieAnne]

My mom believes the man in the dark suit, sitting beneath the second window from the left, is her dad.

 

[Stray Cat]

WOW..
I like the photo.. All of them are working hard, and in the middle of it.. there's a man in the SUIT!
(you don't see that every day) lol