One of my Blog friends requested a story about growing up on our farm as a child. I have been giving it a lot of thought and I thought I would start with stories relating to our pond.
This is a view of our pond probably taken in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was the hub of most of our activities growing up. If it was a hot day, It was our swimming pool. If it was cold all our friends were over ice skating (the casualty rate for skating was quite high with two concussions and two broken limbs, all suffered by our friends). In the warm months it was a favorite spot for bull frog catching and flinging and tadpole wrangling. (Did you know that frogs scream when you throw them back into the water?) We also did a LOT of fishing. We had a very large garden for worm digging and would spend a good part of the morning digging for big long worms for our fishing expeditions. We would all walk down to the pond to cast our lines with all of our barn cats following along behind us. They always knew when we went fishing they would get a fish to eat. Most of the fish we caught were small sun fish or blue gills of which we either threw back or threw over our shoulders for the cats. On one fishing expedition a family friend caught a large bass and was holding his catch up for all to see, and the fish jumped and the barbed hook got caught in his thumb, he had to go to the ER to get it removed.
We really had fun swimming in the pond in the summer even though it was full of fish, snakes and snapping turtles. The pond was also the landing place for all of the calf nuts extracted while working calves. (yup we worked calves just like they do over at Pioneer Woman, not as high a volume though) I use the term we very loosely, I did everything I could not to have to do it. We would use old tractor tire inter-tubes to float on while we swam. Once we were sitting near the pond waiting for my mom to come and lifeguard while we swam. She was canning tomatoes and needed to finish them up before we could swim. My Brother John was bouncing on the tractor tire inter-tube and he bounced way to high and landed wrong and broke his wrist.We got my brother back up to the house and my Mom took one look at his wrist and knew just by looking at it that it was broken. She sat him down with an ice pack and told him to sit still while she finished canning the tomatoes. It didn't take long but we always tease my brother and my Mom about how long it took and that the tomatoes were more important than his broken arm.
This is what the house looks like today. The barn was taken down and is being reused in the Lancaster PA area by an Amish family. You can see the slight outline of the barn in the picture above. The family that bought our house painted all of the beautiful red brick white. It is a shame, it was such a beautiful house before that. It always makes me sad to see it now.
It seems that this post has a lot of injury reports in it. Sorry, That's farm life for you! Just for the record I did leave a portion of the fishing part out. My brothers will know what this is but I thought it would be to gory to post about it.
So so good and thank you so much for this.
Of course I want more!!! What were the seasons like, what did you produce, did your Mum have any favourite recipes?
Was farming in your family?
That barn and that pond! Fantastic!
Posted by: bluemountainsmary | February 20, 2009 at 08:17 PM
My biggest Pond memory is when I caught BB (the cat) on a back cast of my fly rod. As I recall he was not very happy about it. As for John's broken arm I'm pretty sure that happened on my Birthday either 9th or 10th. Great pic of the pond. I can't look at the other picture and regret the day I went back and saw how they had messed up the place.
Posted by: Brother Coleman | February 21, 2009 at 08:23 AM
I'm sure given the chance the less flattery parts of the fishing story might get posted by one of the two brothers, we'll have to wait and see. Not to be my job though!
Posted by: Pam | February 21, 2009 at 10:08 AM
The old pictures bring back a ton of memories. We all spent a lot of time at the pond, fishing, frog hunting, and shooting.
Brother Andrew
Posted by: Andrew Stump | February 21, 2009 at 12:44 PM
What about the camp outs?
Posted by: Sally Stump | February 21, 2009 at 08:58 PM
Yes, the fishing. Great fun and lots of great childhood memories. At times, we would run out of worms and when we ran out of bait, we would have to improvise. Sarah would hold down the fish (with her bare feet)and insert the fish hook into the eye of the fish and yank the fish eye balls out. The fish eyes worked great for bait. We also feed the fresh cut bull testicles to our family dogs, Ben, Liz and Bird. Lots of other wonderful memories of growing up on the farm.
Posted by: brother John | February 22, 2009 at 10:01 AM
Oh, what a cool post! Loved it.
Hey, tomatoes are important. He wasn't bleeding, so it's all cool. Ha!!
Posted by: Kate | February 22, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Just for the record it was the boys that started the eye thing. I held them with my hands not my bare foot :) Were else would I learn a gross thing like that? I was a young and innocent girl among three not so innocent boys!
Posted by: Sarah S. | February 22, 2009 at 10:28 AM
What about how we had to pull our feet up really quick when we jumped off the dock so we didn't "break the mud"? Bwa ha ha ha!
And don't feel bad Mrs. Stump, I let Reese go 2 weeks with a broken arm...the ER docs kept thinking I was getting the date wrong when I answered "when did the injury occur?"
Posted by: Les | February 23, 2009 at 11:16 AM
The house is now white?!?!?! That's so sad. I loved the red brick house. I love your farm story, Sarah. Plus another thing to add about the pond, we always threw our Easter eggs out there after finding them. : )
Posted by: Annie : ) | February 23, 2009 at 01:51 PM
I love seeing pictures of the house and hearing stories of life back then. Brings back fond memories of childhood. Thanks for sharing. Can't wait for part II.
Posted by: Mary | February 25, 2009 at 01:21 AM