Great Depression

Was reading stories of the depression and got me wondering how anyone made it through that as a farmer. People now days I think truly have forgotten how horrible it was and what people did to stay alive. Would love to hear stories passed down of how some farmers and families did it. Thanks

One guy told me they lost a 120 acre farm for $2700. Said it might as well have been a million. No way in the world they could raise it.
Another old gal told me when I was a teenager that she couldn't stand to eat eggs. She said that sometimes that was all they had to eat during the depression. Three times a day and every day of the week.

I don't know if I have what you are looking for but here goes. My understanding of both sets of grandparents was that neither family carried much of any debt going into the 1930's and that had to help. Further, I don't recall any stories of crop failures which would have affected income. Probably those two categories insured that they survived and even prospered here and there. Dad's father bought equipment during the Depression including a tractor. They were poised to take advantage of the prosperity of the 1940's and 1950's which they did.


Some folks were just caught up in bad circumstances where they did have poor years or happened to have money out in 1929. When they did have a poor crop year most likely meant the garden did not do too well which affected their diets. I know for my families that they certainly had very little money for anything beyond the basics but nobody never did not have three good meals per day. Some meals may have been oatmeal or eggs but the following meal made up for it.

Actually the farm economy never recovered from the Depression of 1919 so the 30's was more of the same.Grandmother always said they didn't have any money before the depression or during it,never really made much cash farming until WWII drove farm prices up.But she said they always had plenty to eat unlike many city folks.

All of the songs say that they were so poor that they didn't even know about any depression. My mother would have been seventeen and thus very much aware but she never mentioned it. I remember my father, however, who lived in a large town in central NH at the time, telling about getting casual manual labor work, and working his tail off so that he would get called on again.

I have a 102 year friend who went through it. His dad farmed in Kansas. Some how they survived. Shortly after the depression he left the farm moved to California. That move has something to do with a girl. She got married, as he did also. in their old age her husband died, and his wife died. They got together again in their late 80's and got married. She died a few years ago./ He is an amazing guy. He passed his driving test at 101. He lived alone, until he fell and broke his hip. That ended his driving and living alone. Stan

My Dad always told me about the depression of 1919, which bounced back through the excessive use of credit that triggered the crash of 1929. I was born in the middle of the depression. Dad bought the farm when it was real cheap, but I remember Mom & Dad worrying about how they were going to meet the $310 annual mortgage payment that was due in March. Now people spend that much for a night out on the town.

I bought a cookbook written in the depression that I gave to my sister. There were a lot of recipes in the book how to cook different kinds of weeds to make them edible. I don't ever remember going hungry at home, but we raised our own vegetables and hunted a lot for meat.

My mother who is still with us at 93 lived through it in central MN. Her stories seem to tell of survival as a family and neighborhood more than as a success as a business. Let's remember that in a lot of areas the small farms were fairly diverse and were able to work with the neighborhood for their needs. I would say that the more specified farmers were in a little tougher spot as there may not had the diversities that other areas had.
I always think of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and how some were left in that situation. As for the stories form 90 years ago in central MN they seemed to make it through as a farmer because they were farmers and they didn't have much other option. Both Pa and Mom told stories of families that failed and left and of families that were in a tough spot and held together. One I recall is of Grandpa hauling cut wood to town to a fairly poor family who would buy the wood, cut to size and split it for sale to the townsfolk who needed the wood for heat or cooking. That family made it through and is still contributing in the area today. Neither Grandpa or Mr. Bauer got rich, but they made it. Grandpa's farm had trees and boys and that made lumber at the mill and that supplemented the farm. He might have made a nickel or two off hauling a load of shine as well.
In central MN there was Minnesota 13 and some farms were saved by the fact that they had a still and some made a bit off of the support roles of that market. While those stats will never show up on an agricultural chart from 1932 and have reached more of a folklore status they were part of the agricultural fabric here in central MN.

Grandpa had a big crop in the fall of 1919. My Dad and his oldest brother wanted Grandpa to sell all the crop and pay off the mortgage on the farm. Instead Grandpa bought another boy a new Model T, one daughter got a new piano, etc., etc., then in another month or so the market crashed. Grandpa passed away in 1928; the mortgage still wasn't fully paid off when Grandma died in 1947!

People overpaid for land along with leveraging themselves pretty steep during the boom of 1917-19 which was about feeding Europe during the tail end of WWI. When prices returned to normal those who went out on the limb lost their shirts. If you kept a cool head during 1917-1919 the 1920's while not great for farmers did not kill them either. Farmers back then like lots of others played the stock market during the roaring '20's and some were not in a position to take a loss when the losses came. One farmer in the community here took his life during the early 1930's because he went insolvent. It really was not much different in the 1970's as some thought a good thing was going to last forever so they paid top prices for ground and scheduled debt for the next 30 plus years. The best thing to do with a boom is to figure it is only going to last a couple of years and plan your finances based on that.

My Mother always said--once you have your depts paid, it don't take much money to live. That holds true even today. Both sides of my family had their farms paid for going into the depression. They had veggies in the garden, fruit on the trees, meat and milk in the barn and eggs in the coop. Did not need much else.

The combo of the dust bowl and the depression had to be so difficult.

If you were farming in other areas, you might have gotten by better than some town folk.

Mom came from a large family, and she talked of some of her sisters coming out when it was time to plant potatoes at the farm. The sisters cut the eyes out of the potatoes, planted the eyes, and saved the rest of the potato for food. It was pretty rough on the town folk that were just trying to get started in life..... My understanding the farm did ok with her parents, tighten the belt a little but they were used to living off the garden and canning and so forth anyhow, lots of labor from the big family, didn't make too much difference to those on the farm unless your timing was bad with some debt.

Dad never said much about the depression, the farm here is in a typically too wet area, so a drought gets it just a little dry here, not devistating. He said 1988 was much worse drought than the dust bowl days. I think grandpa had the farm paid for at the time, and so the depression happened around them all but they had food for the table and feed for the critters and they just carried on.

This region of the country tended to be frugal conservative Germans that owned their farms, and didn't go out on a financial limb very far, so they weathered the depression on the farm pretty good unless just happened to get a loan and were in the wrong place without a paddle.

I heard a lot more stories from him about WWII and the scrimping and iron and rubber drives and using coupons to buy stuff (rationed), and patching bald tires because rubber went to the war drive.

The whole 1980s was a much much worse time period for farmers in my neighborhood. The 70s was a time of ag expansion and everyone dove deeply into debt even the frugal Germans because farming was easy and machinery was rapidly getting bigger and the world was buy buy buy on grains, living large was the way to go! Until boom. And then it wasn't.

1988 was both the worst and best year here.

It was worst because we had a crop failure, this wet ground never dries out and it dried out and the heat was terrible, my neighbor sprayed 24d with drop nozzles on tall corn, (common back then, thistle control) and the corn had so little moisture it tried to live on that spray and turned white. Oddest thing I ever saw. It kept living, but it never set kernals or even much ears, ended up barren stalks from that spray. He chopped it for silage eventually.

Our corn field beside it set ears, but was few kernels, big fat round ones. I made 7 rounds combining it and dumped into the truck. Not because the hopper was full but the truck was getting so far away. Think we got 20bu corn on that field. Other fields in the low wet spots, the corn yields just jumped up, 80-100 these were the spots I normally didn't get much yield from as the crop would always drown out.....

1988 was also maybe the best year for ag in a backhanded way. The crop damage hit so much of the country was so bad, yields so low, that we -finally- were able to use up the govt stockpiles of grain that were sitting in this country.

The 1970s and early 80s had record crops, and pretty good prices early on. Jimmy Carter put on the grain embargo which scared the heck out of countries that depend upon buying grain to eat; those countries scrambled and found other places that were willing to grow and sell grains (Brazil expanded greatly in those few years!), leaving USA grain sitting In bins, no where to go no one wanted it. The govt saw farmers getting into trouble, and tried to help out by propping up grain prices with odd 'reward' programs. This made farmers grow even more and more crops. So every year the govt was buying more and more grain, and letting it sit in piles. So folks who needed grain saw those huge piles of grain, and stopped paying much for it - there was so much grain, no need to pay much for it, there would not be any shortage! The markets got very out of whack, and with the govt programs the only way you could break even was to produce even more grain on your farm. And so farmers did. The mountains of grain got bigger and bigger. Prices got lower and lower. The govt finally realized everything was going backwards, and started trying to limit the amount of grain being produced. That is where you hear of the old programs that paid farmers not to grow crops. They helped a bit, but really didn't do much.

Until 1988, when the whole country mostly had a crop failure, and we could use up the extra grain stockpiles finally.

The 2008 ecconomics slump from the housing bubble devalued the USA dollar, and so our grains started looking really good to other countries finally after decades of USA being the last country to buy from. Really cheap! So they bought a lot of grain from us again, came to us first. As well there were some minor crop failures in the mid 2000s. Nothing like 1988, but we raised a little less grain. All of which pushed grain prices to record highs - but remember with the cheap dollar those record high prices still looked like a sale price to other countries so they kept buying our grain.

And here we are today, with the dollar creeping higher and grain prices crashed down lower again, other countries not able to afford our high cost (because of dollar value) grains,, and interest rates thinking of moving up. We've had three years of really good crop production through most of the USA, lots of bushels sitting around......

The cycle continues.

Paul

I was born in 1933 which makes me a depression era baby. We did not have a farm and we did not own much of anything. My earliest memories are of always being hungry as my father, who did often get work, liked to drink to much. I can count over 12 different places that we lived before I left home and joined the military. I could write an entire book on my experience as a boy but it would be da** depressing. Not to worry, I have done ok in my life but I am always aware that the big depression is just a few banking mistakes away. Happy farming.

My parents both lived through it, born in 10 and 13. Dad was probably farming and logging on his own by then, his dad died in 29 so he probably helped his mother and siblings out. My mother was in college until about 35, working in different places around the country in the summer. They developed spending habits that proved to be successful, I don't think they ever borrowed money for anything but land, and that worked out well for them. At least living on a farm you could grow food if you had water and seed, imaging living in a big city and being laid off from a factory!

Wow, took me a little while to type all that, and a long time to try to proof read it, and now that it got posted I see so many reply with about the same type of views! Was afraid I might have been out in left field with what I said.

paul

One of my grandfathers went into growing hybrid seed corn during the 1930's and did fairly well for the times. I think the depression hurt people in cities much harder than in rural areas.

My area wasn't settled until beginIngrid 1907 when the homesteaders came. We came in 1910. What finished guys off around here was the dry years from 1918 to 1920. That's when half the homesteaders left here. We survived the Great Depressoon because nothing had really changed. We were debt free, used to living off the garden, the beef/milk cows, chickens, and that's how it was before, during, and after the Depression. Our biggest worry was not crop prices but if we would get a crop.

I agree with your last statement.

My mothers parents homesteaded in Sask. and it was touch and go for them , mother was born in 1916. My dad's folks did much better here in Ontario. Dad was born in 1918 and his dad bought a second farm for cash in 1932. Dad told me that even in the worst year of the depression , his dad made $100.00 after all his taxes were paid, some folks lost their farms to unpaid tax bills.

Both my Mom and Dad were born in 1921 so both lived through the depression and the dry hot years of 30,s Mom grew up in town and Dad on the farm. Here is a picture of my Dad teaching his pet jack rabbits how to walk on their hind legs!!----------Tee

Owners of the bank in our town, Kirkwood Il., acquired several thousand acres through foreclosures, some with with very little mortgage left. Now known as Ricketts/Palmer ground divided up and farmed by several area farmers. 92 yr old cust/friend said his family ate a lot of popcorn and milk and many burned corn in place of coal. Today seeing people fight over goods at a black Friday sale, imagine if it was food they were grabbing instead!

Family folklore from all sets of granparents , As other posters stated ,, NONE carried much debt , , lots of stories , BUT most colorful,1st,my moms dad and brothers ALWAYS made whiskey for their own medicinal purposes,.. in the early days they used a model T to saw lumber and grind feed , then put the wheel back on and drove to church , fast Ff prohibition,,the folks at frenchlick ind , came rooting around dubois co , Ferdinand IND , for goodSAFEwhiskey ,,. and granpa Frank was renowned for the best, offered granpa 5 bux a gallon, granpa said,NO, its against the law, they doubled to 10, still granpa said NO,at 15 bux granpa realized he needed the money afterall, LOL, to improve things on the farm .lol ,,.by the time the depression came, he had a Fordson tractor for the mills and a new model a Ford, by 1932, they had a new WC allis chalmers and they were getting 25 bux a gallon , My uncles were delivering "Shine" in a new "32 "strait 8 Chrysler that was capable of going a hundred mph ,. and that was a good thing around Lafeyette IND one day , according to uncle Renus,. they never got caught in all their trips to Chicago, indy, Louisville and as far as St Louis and Nashville ,. granpa wanted to quit many times,for so many, many reasons and finally did for good ,, but my mom's bros. and pals kept up the enterpize,,. the county sheriff and the priest played a role more than once to protect them from the feds ,a telephone tip , would have them scrambling to throw the mash to the howgs ,bury the distilling equipment in the ground or ,strw stak , sawdust pile or simply thrown in the reservoir lake that backt up on to the WEYER farm . once when cousn Leroy was born .they stored the tubing and cooker in my aunts bedroom ....the Priest and the aunt midwife shamed the feds for wanting to go search her room, as she had a very hard time bringing in Leroy , at perfect timmin infant Leroy could be heard crying thru the door ,.. ..,the county sheriff told the Feds " These are Good folks you been botherin hereall day , You ALL best HIT the road boys and not come back to Dubois County ! ". . in 1936 they decided to legitimize the enterprize much to granpas relief,, but got no where with a know nuthin attorney . when the 37 flood devastated Louisville,, Uncle HUGLE needed men to help rebuild, and granpa Frank lost nearly all his good helpers to the big city .Irwin Bought some 85 acres where UPS is now located ,.that was the winter of 37-38,,,after Army service in the CBs in WW 2, ( The German Descent with accent were tested to be spies if they liked that choice , or were put in construction brigade, not so much because their allegiance was in question , but because other soldiers serving along side would question allegiance and )" beat the hale out of those with German accent" according to Oscar Wilmes..
over the next 30 yrs uncle Irwin would built and Sold over 150 very nice signature homes on that land ,.. only to live to see them all torn down for the freight terminals,,. the houses were to big to move ///// , my dads Dad worked at L and N RR for over 50 yrs ,. he got a decent retirement, and health insurance for life,, pulled a lot of 16 hour shifts during ww2 as a switchman .. he started out as a welder, and he told me that as young man they needed him California to r epair the biggest locomotive of all the Big Boy,.. they were called Alleghennys here.. when granpa got old ,, he was given easier jobs,,. now that was nice of good Ol L and N RR . compared to the corporate communism that prevails today in the workplace //////,, To hear my Dad and his uncles tell it (who were nearly the same age and Granmas side ) all the Bischofs did was work their az off for nuthin ,, during the depression ,..LOL ,,to their credit, I am most inspired to Farm with Case tractors ,, thru my Dads formative years, they threshed with steam, Bischof bros. had 2 steamers and threshers for about 10 yrs running a circuit around jeferson , bullit , nelson and Oldham co. KY ,.summer of "36" great uncle joe, Gus ,Pete and Louis , traded both steamers in for a new CASE L and a IHC to run the threshers ,it seems a FALSE nasty rumor had begun that a fire was caused by one of the steam engines that dry summer,.actually it was as set of bad pitchfork tines that was mistakenly tossed in the thresher ,,. the sparks blew into the strawstak ,While Gus and Pet e busied themselves with clearing the Thresher,,. someone hollered FIRE!! and it was a hale of a fight to keep fire from spreading to the buildings and crops , thanks to quik thinking a plow and disc quikl y put to use to make a fire barrier ,. while moving the steamer and thresher to safety joe snapt the belt and it was lost in the fire .. the summer of 36 was incredibly hot and Dry, and the bros were able to get a good deal on both gaspowered tractors,. and they knew how bad news would travel ,, but good news traveled well too ,.the threshing business was to be a good supplement income to all the Bischof bloods thru W W 2 ,,. only trouble was they could not find enuf help so the girls pitched in ,,.

They mostly did without, or with very little. My Dad always said that they never really thought about the depression much farming and logging in North Louisiana because no one ever had any money to talk about anyway. My Mother was one of 9 children raised in a two room house in South Georgia which was one of the poorest areas of the country at the time, she was born in 1921 and never had a pair of shoes until she was 6 years old, she was the baby and there were no hand me downs left time it got to her.

Grandmothers parents lost their farm over a loan the banker talked them into. It would be better to borrow the money for the barn instead of using their cash. He later repossessed the farm even though they had more money in the bank than the loan. He said their money disappeared on black friday . Grandfathers dad went to look for a job never came back. For his 14th birthday he recieved a new pair of work shoes and a set of clothes to big after his birthday meal his mother told him she couldn't feed him and his brother and sister who were much younger and sent him down the road. He road the rails for about a year and then Got into the CCC.

I remember my dad saying that there were people that used to drain the oil out of the car (probably had fresh oil to use in the mean time) let it sit for a while, strain it and re-use it. Good thing those engines were "forgiving" back then.

Dad was born in "05, Mom in "09. When they got married in 1931, they lived on his home place with inlaws, AND his brother, and her sister, who were married to each other. Thus I have double first cousins....they had 14 kids! Mom and Dad had 6. Mom said during the depression, everyone was equally poor off, so they could commiserate with conditions. They made their own fun, push back the kitchen table, some brought instruments, and a few neighbors had their own dance party!

Mom said once she walked to the neighbor"s for "everlasting yeast", rather than burn the gas to go to town for yeast. My folks farmed with the siblings until each had a Fordson tractor and equipment, then went to rented farms. One uncle bought Grandpas"s farm, so he wouldn"t lose it in the Depression. Another uncle paid for his farm by cooking MN 13 moon, til he got scared he"d get caught. His oral history is in the Stearns County Museum, and he is also referred to in a book about MN 13. MN 13 was the type of corn that was used for cooking moon. At one time Grandpa owned 5 farms, but lost all of them in the Depression, and ended up living with his daughter and son in law that had bought his farm. Then on to a county home where he died, on a county "old age" pension.

Dad used to earn some money by hiring out to the county, working on roads. Brought a team of horses to pull a dirt scraper, and got paid 50 cents per day. Once he sold 3 cows to the stockyards in South St. Paul, and got a check for $24.

My oldest sister is 85yo, and I credit the Depression for her fondness of things, possessions, because they had so little at the time.

I can tell you a great story told to my by my Wife's late Grandfather. I have absolutely no doubt it is true. He was an extremely hard working man until close to his death in his mid 70's. Excellent person.

He lived in North Central KS on the home farm. There was no money to be made so he hopped a train and ended up in, I believe, Washington State. He found work picking berries. He became good friends with two Brothers who worked with him. At the end of the season, he had some money in his pocket and was getting ready to head back to the farm. The two Brothers whom he was good friends told him they were going to start their own business and wanted him to come in as a full partner. He wanted to get back to the farm and declined their offer. The names of the two Brother was Smuckers. He could have gotten in on the ground floor.

BTW, I know this to be true because he showed me letters from them as they corresponded back and forth for some years. He did very well in the hog business with his son, my Father in Law. Before my FIL retired he farrowed just over 4000 sows a year. They did farrow to finish and figured they ran about 50,000 head a year through their farm. Truly great people. Bob

We did OK during the depression, Because the old man was a cheep scape and a real operator. I so remember a neighbor telling how there was no money around and no place to get any He often told how he bought a milking machine and the payment was 5 dollars a month and a lot of months he didn't know if he could pay it. He talked about going to McCredie's store and give them a little money on the old bill and get more. He didn't think he would ever get it paid off. But he ended up OK when he died he had a few bucks in the bank and the farm was paid for.

BTW, a great movie that depicts the life of the Kansas, Oklahoma, Western Nebraska farmer is "The Grapes of Wrath." I strongly suggest watching it if you want to know the dirt farmers life through the 30's. It is supposedly a pretty true account. Stars a young Henry Fonda. Bob

I was born in 1934. I remember as a little kid it was a Saturday afternoon ritual to take the week's accumulation of eggs and cream to town and sell them at a place called the "Farmer's Union". Then buy groceries and supplies for the upcoming week.

As I recall, my parents felt comfortable for the upcoming week if they had $3.00 left over when we headed home.

In the winter, it was a community effort to cut blocks of ice off of a frozen river a half mile from our house, then pack the blocks in straw below grade level in a neighborhood "ice house" for use during the upcoming year. It actually usually lasted until about August. My father had built an "ice engine" on runners out of a Model T Ford engine running a buzz saw blade to saw up the ice on the river.

Maybe more later.

google "MN 13- from grain to glass"

Good essay. Thanks for paragraphing it.

Here is the PBS Special that was on a couple of years ago. As you watch this you can feel your lungs plugging up. God help us we never see days this dark again in this country! Thank you to all of you folk who sat down and did a whole lot of typing to tell us these stories !
American Experience Surviving the Dustbowl.

Always baffled by the term 'Great Depression" It certainly wasn't Great for the folks that went through it. I have some stories told to me by my grandfather (landed in NY city in 1901) and logged his way across the continent to homestead in B.C. Not good times in the 20's-30's.

My parents' experiences were completely different during those years.

Mother's parents owned two farms going into the Depression. Lost one of them when a banker pulled a very dirty trick to save himself (foreclosed without giving my grandfather any notice). My mother got piano lessons in exchange for cabbage grown in their garden; she considered it a waste of good cabbage. Another thing she mentioned was how much farmers hated Roosevelt's idea to drive the price of pork up by forcing farmers to kill their pigs instead of marketing them. In the end, my grandparents sent all four of their daughters to college; two were WAC officers during WWII.

My father had it relatively easy. His father was a lawyer and sometime city magistrate so they were okay.

Here is the other by Ken Burns. Same guy who did 5he Civil War. Please take your time to watch it. It is very long but worth it.
Ken Burns The Dustbowl

I remember my Grandfather saying they made hay in the sloughs and dried up ponds . One of those is about 1/2 mile from here, and today holds 4-5 feet of water year round.

Tim Egan wrote "The Worst Hard Times" about the Dust Bowl and Depression; a great book. Egan was one of the narrators in Burn's PBS show about the Dust Bowl. The book is better than the show.

Both sides of my grandparents were both farmers raising families during the depression. Mom's folks had no debt and they made it OK by trading what they had for what they needed. There was no money. Dad's folks had a lot more land but also a debt. Grandad had around 3000 acres, he sold off about 2000 acres to reduce his debt. They also traded butter, eggs and ham for flour and sugar.

I asked my dad once how my grandfathers dairy did during the depression.
His response was; The depression years were hard but it was WW2 that put him out on business.
I think it was a lack of labor that did him in.

The stock market crash was of course in 29. My grandpa sad that the effects really didn't hit farm life until the dust bowl hit. That's when things really got bad on the farm. Things really didnt start to turn around until WW2 came along. To make matters worse, his father died in 36. From then on, he had to take out mortgages to buy his siblings out one by one as they wanted out of the estate. He had been renting the family farm ahead of his father dying. He never got the mortgages completely paid off until up around 1960. And only then because he sold part of the farm to my dad.
One time when it was really bad, he shelled corn and hauled a load of it to town to sell. He then bought coal to return home with to heat the house. He didn't get enough money out of the corn to pay for the coal. So after that, he just burned ear corn in the stove to heat the house. He not only saved money by doing this, but he also saved himself from having to do all that hauling. And he was using a team and wagon at that time also.

I of course wasn't around for that, but my mother was. My father was still in Poland and a few years later may have wished that he had been here for the depression as opposed to what he and his family, friends, nation went through at the hands of Adolf. But my mother was here with her brothers and sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, children that moved back home with her/their parents. My grandparents had several families living under their roof that all pitched in on the farm. Everyone had to pull their own weight, or at least pitch in. My mother had a pet pig, a runt that she called "Ration" after food rations. Eventually, a fattened up "Ration" became dinner. One thing that Mom still makes from time to time that I love, are meatballs that aren't meatballs at all, but eggplant balls dipped and soaked in meat juices. Look and taste like meatballs, but are not. I love them. My brothers and sisters don't like them. Back when she was a kid...they were meat...but not. They absorbed grease or juice from the Sunday pork roast (Ration). Now days, smart phones are part of...rations and if that ever stops, the riots will never stop.

Mark

Better yet, read the book.
John Steinbeck was a great author.
I read most of his books when I was in HS.
Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, Tortilla Flats, Of Mice and Men, Travels with Charlie, etc, etc.

My dad was around 9 years old at the start of the depression. His dad was killed from being thrown from a horse 6 months before dad was born. It was just him and his mom during the depression. They had a milk cow and some chickens, but someone stole some of their chickens. His mom worked part time at a restaurant about 2 miles away washing dishes. She walked to get there.

Your story reminds me of similar ones mom and dad told. Often when I ty to explain how the cream was kept and the milk was fed to the pigs my generation and younger give me a look like I'm full of it. They might have something.

Ice cutting was big in central MN as well. While mom and dad didn't get in on the harvest she tells a story of post war years when the Great Soo League baseball played in Albany and she and dad were involved in the concession stand. She had to go to Freeport to the ice house on Kings Lake to get ice to cool the beer. No one was there for her appointment so she found a plank and wrestled the block of ice into the trunk of the Chevy. On the return trip to Albany she picked up a tail and figured for sure she was caught for stealing the ice. Upon arrival at the ball park the car pulled up and the fella said "lady I think your gas tank is leaking" as the ice block was melting in the summer heat.

I know of a couple of gangs of old farts that still do an ice saw outing with the old saw rig. One is on Koronis and the other is on Green lake. There were many special tools for marking, cutting, and extracting the ice that typically got packed on saw dust ice the ice houses in these parts.

I grew up just south of the barn with the hidden still room in the Minnesota 13 book. Vos was the family that farmed there and did OK through the depression and did better after.

My mom grew up up the hill from the big cooker in Avon that took turns sitting in Leveworth when the feds did come. She said Grandpa ran a couple of loads to Fargo, but felt way too uneasy and gave that up for his more honest wood business.

The WPA and CCC also gave some of the locals a means of raising a bit of money and were sometimes trucked off to northern parts for the projects. I recall as a kid seeing the CCC stamps in the sidewalks that were poured around town. As well I believe that some of the stone walls that were and still are around SCSU were a CCC or WPA project.

Stories like the still room under the pig barn so the smoke went through the common chimney, the corn wasn't out of place, and the smell of hogs covered the smell of shine. Another favorite was the one of the parents being gone and the children fearing the feds showing up feeding the mash to the geese. Upon returning and finding all the "dead" geese they proceeded to pluck them for the down. During the plucking the geese started waking from their dead stupor.

"13" was the Hybrid number given to that strain of hybrid corn by the U of M who was big in crop genetics. Corn, grain, and apples if I recall correctly. So when the local "cooks" used the new large cob, taller standing corn to create their libation the moniker "Minnesota 13" was hung on it.

Great is another word for LARGE. Look it up in a thesaurus. Great, big, large, enormous, huge, and the like.

That is a good book.

My grandpa helped keep the family fed. His jobs were chickens, squirrel and potatoes. Not too much squirrel, not much money for ammo. He was a dang good shot. Had to be, either hit it or don't eat!

The local weekly paper ran a story with pictures on the front page about the local amish community having an ice harvesting bee just this past January. It must have been a really slow news week. When I worked days I was at the gas station a couple of times when amish guys were buying a couple of bags of ice so I guess they run out by fall.

Both sets of grandparents lived on subsistence farms here in NY. My maternal grandparents said they never had anything and couldn't tell the difference between the depression and normal times. My paternal grandparents actually did quite well during the depression, they built a large rooming house from trees cut on the farm, sawed by neighbors farm sawmill and labor was supplied by people walking the roads that had nothing and would work for food and a place to sleep.

You and I should meet some day- we"re not far apart. I think you"re near the Crow River....

(quoted from post at 12:36:43 03/11/17) You and I should meet some day- we"re not far apart. I think you"re near the Crow River....

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JMS, did you ever go to Crow River Rental in Rogers?

Nope- what is Crow River rental?

My Maternal Grand Father spent a lot of time talking about the Depression and about as much more time looking for another Depression.

(quoted from post at 20:04:38 03/11/17) Nope- what is Crow River rental?

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It was an independent rental shop on the corner of 101 and 53rd St. NE. The nortbound ramp cuts through where it used to be. A friend who lived here in NH for seven years way back ran it for about 15 years.

(quoted from post at 20:55:49 03/10/17) I can tell you a great story told to my by my Wife's late Grandfather. I have absolutely no doubt it is true. He was an extremely hard working man until close to his death in his mid 70's. Excellent person.

...The two Brothers whom he was good friends told him they were going to start their own business and wanted him to come in as a full partner. He wanted to get back to the farm and declined their offer. The names of the two Brother was Smuckers. He could have gotten in on the ground floor.

BTW, I know this to be true because he showed me letters from them as they corresponded back and forth for some years. . Bob

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The name might be Smuckers but not THE Smuckers of jam and jelly fame. That Smuckers was from Orrville, Ohio. The company HQ is still there. http://www.jmsmucker.com/smuckers-corporate/smuckers-history

From what my grandmother told me, they lost their hotel on Lake George NY and had to move back on the family farm with her parents. Farmers in that area seemed to do okay since they were near a decent sized city (Glens Falls NY). A lot of bartering took place I understand. Cash money came from the milk and cream, eggs and produce sent to NYC and its outskirts. It was touch and go according to her until the war build up.

(quoted from post at 02:13:26 03/12/17)
My Maternal Grand Father spent a lot of time talking about the Depression and about as much more time looking for another Depression.

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I know exactly what you mean. I knew several older couples that felt that way. The next one was always just around the corner. I was given several boxes of farm stuff one of those couples had saved in exchange for helping them with a project. In addition to the old shotgun shells and harness hardware in the boxes, which is what I was after, there was a mess of "stuff" they'd saved- balls of string knotted together, home made hoof knives made from files, worn out files, pieces of wax the size of a gumstick, things like that. It was junk to us, but it was worth saving to them.

(quoted from post at 18:48:11 03/12/17)

(quoted from post at 02:13:26 03/12/17)
My Maternal Grand Father spent a lot of time talking about the Depression and about as much more time looking for another Depression.

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I know exactly what you mean. I knew several older couples that felt that way. The next one was always just around the corner. I was given several boxes of farm stuff one of those couples had saved in exchange for helping them with a project. In addition to the old shotgun shells and harness hardware in the boxes, which is what I was after, there was a mess of "stuff" they'd saved- balls of string knotted together, home made hoof knives made from files, worn out files, pieces of wax the size of a gumstick, things like that. It was junk to us, but it was worth saving to them.

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My grandparents were the same. When my dad's mother died, she had a shed full of glass mustard and pickle jars. Christmas wrapping paper was always carefully removed, folded and saved to be used again. The idea must have been planted in my brain too, I have a hard time throwing away stuff that could be reused.

Believe it or not some farmers' lifeline in the Depression was the whiskey business. Some would set the still out in the corn field so many rows in.

From what I was told the sheriff was kinda in on it too. Whenever the feds were coming to check up on everyone he'd go up town and say subtle hints like "It's gonna get cold tonight better put the cows in." Then everyone would get the hint and get ready for the revenuers.