The Old Farmstead
I grew up on the very edge of a small south Georgia town. My mother grew up two miles away, toward the center of town in an historic, Greek Revival style home. Her mother was raised on a small farm in central Alabama. This story isn’t about me or them. It’s about my maternal grandfather’s early life that led him from the farm at the end of the road (a road that had been named after his great-grandfather 60 years prior,) across the USA and back again. I called him Granddaddy, but it sounded more like Granddeddy.
The Beginning
In the nineteen-aughts, Granddeddy was born in the three-room house where he would spend his entire youth. The house stood at the end of the road, 15 miles from town. It had been built originally by his grandfather, who had the help of the other men from their tiny, country church. (Side note – a family reunion bearing his name is still held every year in the 1960s-era fellowship hall addition at this church.)
So he was born, and by the time he was five, he had a little sister and a baby brother. The family was cash-poor, but owned about 100 acres of quite fertile farmland behind the little farmhouse. Several of Granddeddy’s great-uncles, uncles, and cousins owned farms adjacent to and nearby his. Granddeddy’s farm had a fruit and nut orchard, a great vegetable garden area, and eventually a productive, creek-fed pond, though the date that the creek was dammed isn’t clear – this may have been just a creek during his childhood. Of course, like every other family in rural America at that time, they also kept a sizeable flock of chickens for meat, eggs, and feathers.
The Real Production
The real production on the farm was cattle, though. The back 75 or so acres formed a pasture that spilled down toward the creek across a series of earthen, gently rounded terraces. The whole pasture was densely covered in highly productive Bahia grass. Whom ever cleared, graded, and planted that pasture worked their asses off, as this was before power tools and heavy equipment were widely available. They undoubtedly used axes and mules, plus some serious determination. If I had to guess, I would say it was probably my great-great-grandfather and his brothers. Surely the old yellow pines were milled into the giant beams and siding that became the barn that I played in during my childhood. The pasture could maintain at least a few dozen head of cattle, with only minimal feed supplementation during the short southern winter.
Whatever the farm didn’t produce on site, they traded for with family and friends on nearby farms, or traded for / bought at the general store down the road. Within a couple of miles, almost everything they needed was either produced or available. They made their own clothes, canned fruits and vegetables, gathered eggs and milked the cows, in addition to eating chicken and beef, caught fish in and hunted deer, squirrels, rabbits, and anything else with food value.
Hard Work on the Farm
Although daily life included a lot of hard work on the farm, especially during the summer, his childhood was pretty idyllic. Everyone did their part, even the younger children, to keep the whole thing running. Then things took a dark turn…
Changes on the Horizon
It started as an occasional but severe cough. The cough became more and more frequent until it was almost constant. The church ladies had been visiting, bringing food but careful not to get too comfortable, lest they catch the cough. The doctor had come from town and said there wasn’t much that could be done. My great-grandmother died late on a night with no moon. Pneumonia, most likely. It was raining by morning.