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When we were little, we always loved to help mother with the chores. We would eagerly help her gather in the produce from the garden and pick the prettiest fruit and berries, and then spend days cooking, baking, pressuring, canning, pickling, freezing and making the most tasty of pastry goodies for the table. We loved summers and helping Mama! However, the summer I’ll remember best was the summer Mama raised chickens to sell for fryers. She wrung their necks and set the three of us up in an assembly line fashion to help scald and pluck to the tune of about 200 chickens throughout the summer. We thought that summer would never come to an end!

I have many childhood memories of the various roles my mother filled on the farm. One of my favorites, however, is that of her "filling the gap in the fence.” When I was young, it seemed like we were always a few panels short when we it came to "working cattle" or breaking a "newly freshened" heifer to the barn. The gaps in our squeeze pen, therefore, were usually filled with a pickup, tractor, wagon or various members of the family. It seemed like Mom always drew an assignment in this process and, whether it was her section or not, was usually held responsible if anything got out. She always bore the blame gracefully, even though most times it was not her fault at all. As I've observed many farm and non-farm families since that time, I don't think things have changed much. In my opinion, the only job tougher than being a mother is being a farm mother.

My mother was my best buddy on the farm. We worked side by side with her as we were growing up doing about any job that had to be done on the farm. She would always encourage us and brag on us regardless of the results of our efforts. I was always amazed about how fast she could do things such as hulling peas, picking beans, and berries etc. She has always had her own recipes for home made chicken and noodles and fried chicken. Nobody will ever make these better than she can. There are too many fond memories to single out. About all the times I have ever spent with my mother on the farm were fond memories. That is why everyone needs to give their mother a hug at least once every time you see her.

Growing up in East Central Oklahoma at the end of the depression, we were a self-sufficient family. We raised cattle, hogs, chickens and an assortment of ducks, geese and guineas (which are the best watch 'dogs' a farm can have) and a huge garden. Sunday mornings before going to church, Mother would go to the chicken house, select a fryer and wring it’s neck, pick it and singe all the fuzzy hair off, clean it under running water, and fry it, then put it in a warm oven. When we came home from church all that was left to complete the traditional Sunday dinner (in the south dinner comes at noon) was to make the cream gravy, and warm the other side dishes. I have not tasted fried chicken that good in many years.

I remember with a warm heart one occasion my father was out of town for a few days and my mother had to put on Dad’s old jeans and knee high rubber boots to help me slop the hogs. It was the only time in her 90 years of life she put on a “man’s” clothing.

I have truly fond memories of work that my mom did on the farm. Most of the work she did included my two older brothers and me and she always made it seem fun and important. You see, Mother was a schoolteacher by profession so our summers were spent “learning and experiencing” new things. She taught us how to work, have fun, and enjoy the fruits of our labor. We also QUICKLY learned to never say that we were bored as Mom could always find weeds to pull, rocks to pick up, or beans to snap!

I grew up on a farm in Cole County. My mother is what I have come to appreciate as epitomizing a true farm mother. There were ten of us on a 160 acre farm (eight kids and two parents) I was third in the birth order with one older brother and one older sister and the rest were all younger. We lived in what was probably a 50 year old three bedroom farm home equipped with a tin roof that old style brick imprinted tin siding in a house which was electrified but never plumbed. Imagine that, no indoor toilet. We cooked on a wood stove and took baths in a long galvanized tub with teakettle heated bath water. We had a gas stove, but Mother said that was reserved for making homemade bread and other bakery items. I remember her telling me that when we were all still home she would bake as many as 28 loaves of bread per week. We milked cows by hand every morning and evening and drank raw milk never worrying about tuberculosis. My mother made equal quantities of butter to keep up with all that bread with a daisy churn that I still use today. She was always right in the thick of it whether we were butchering hogs, beef, lamb or chickens or building fence. I remember when I brought my wife to be home from college one weekend to meet my mother and there she was elbow deep cleaning out hog intestines preparing them to stuff with sausage. Needless to say that day I found out what my future wife was made of and 25 years later she is still the mother of our three children.

My mother could drive a tractor pulling a plow, disc or any other farm implement we used in getting a job done on the farm. When she finally stopped driving tractors she had worn out three sets of gold wedding bands. She would never take them off and my father just kept replacing them. She would work from sun up to sun down and never complain and always had a great meal on the table for us at the end of the day. The next morning she would get up and start all over again. Even while I sit here putting these thoughts down, still so many great memories wash over me of those past years. We were poor by the world standards but never knew it by my mother’s standards. She was always there to fix our hurts and love us unconditionally. She had an 8^th grade education but you would never have known it with her worldly wisdom. We lost her to cancer several years ago but not a day goes by that I don’t remember her fondly and everything she taught me. I was truly blessed to be her son. My mother taught me that life isn’t hard, it’s just an education in progress.

There were nine kids in our family when we were growing up on our farm in West Plains, MO. My mother Lucy Jones was amazing at making sure the whole family was fed all year round. She worked hard churning butter from our cows' cream to make her awesome homemade baked goods with. A big pan full of her ooey gooey warm cinnamon rolls was everyone's favorite breakfast! She cooked a feast out of any game my dad and brothers would bring in and in the summertime would make homemade jelly out of the blackberries the kids picked. She formed us into an assembly line when she'd can countless quarts of fruits and vegetables from our garden to get us through the winter. Mom would send out snacks and lemonade out to the fields when Dad and the boys were haying and have hearty meals ready for them when they came in. I sure appreciate all the time she spent in that farm kitchen and though it was a lot of work, she was sure up to the task!

My fondest farm memories of my mother were in the summers because she taught school the remainder of the year to help with family expenses. She was excellent at canning and freezing the garden food and the aroma in the house during this time was delicious! She had every member of the family, no matter how old, pitching in to help with different tasks and wouldn't let us quit until we were done. She also demonstrated her generosity by giving away lots of "extra" garden food to needy families in our area. She instilled valuable lessons into her children during this special time on the farm.

My mother planted a garden big enough for a family of eight kids, the neighbors, and all the wildlife that normally lived on the land. As she worked one end of the garden, a rabbit generally worked the other end. Often she would pick up a rock or a clod and throw it at the rabbit, just to let it know SHE had ownership of the vegetables by right of labor.

One day, Mom came into the house, a stricken look on her face. "What happened?" we asked.

"I hit it," she said. "The rock I threw struck the rabbit on the side of the head. It jumped up into the air and fell over dead."

My mother had accidentally killed one of her friends who kept her company in the garden.

A friend from out of state who visited the Texas County home where I grew up said, "Your mother is a true child of nature." He was right. Every spring my mother got this faraway look in her eyes, took a pail, and disappeared alone into the woods. She always came back later with pickings of fresh poke, lamb's quarter, wild onions, many succulent greens. They tasted so wonderful after a winter with no salads.

Later, I found out her grandmother was Cherokee, a healer, who knew the woods well and the treasures that grew there. I wish I had paid more attention.

Lucille Frey, Lindley Arm end of L. Pomme de Terre, a few miles from Urbana, MO.

From 1947 to 1954 we dairy farmed in SW Wisconsin. I remember my mom shocking oats, gathering eggs, singeing the feathers off the chickens over the wood cook stove to prepare them for supper and doing a lot of canning and baking.

One of my favorite memories is the time my dad killed one of my mom's prized laying hens. He had already plucked the feathers before bringing it in to have her prepare it. When she and I went to remove the "innards" there were unhatched eggs of every size inside. Boy, was she upset with Dad. My other favorite memory was when we moved to a different farm. My mom thought she had "moved uptown" when she found out that she had a sink hand pump in the house instead of having to go outside to pump our water.

Well although I didn't grow up on a farm, I did grow up in the "country" (on a resort with 325 acres of forested land with a mile of shoreline on the Lake of the Ozarks). Needless to say, there were lots of good memories. It seems, some of my favorite activities/pastimes today are the same I enjoyed when I was a child growing up…..gardening and being with my horse. My mother's garden included the flowering ornamentals, while my father's garden contained the vegetables and fruit trees. My father taught me how to ride horses -- my mother taught me how to keep from killing myself riding horses! To this day, I remember her advising me, “don't walk behind the horse unless he knows you're there……if he runs for the barn (the path to the barn was through trees and under our clotheslines used for the resort's laundry which was done by hand), put your head right down by his neck -- he won't do anything to hurt himself and you'll be safe.” There were, of course, many others. And, I must admit, over the years, they all came in handy. Like many other adults, I look back on some of the antics I tried as a child and nothing short of a miracle and my mother's prayers and sound advice allowed me to survive!

For example, I remember rising early in the cool mornings to pick all of the potato bugs off the little green bushes of potatoes growing. The bugs were colorful and soft and stinky if you squashed them. My two sisters and I would bend over row after row and hand pick all the bugs off. We wore colorful poke bonnets to shade our faces and we had to get every bug off and destroy them before our daddy came in from the fields.

The same procedure was followed picking off the green tomato worms from the tomato bushes. I guess this was all before the invention of insecticides.

Following our father’s cultivator down the rows to be sure the corn was dropped into every dug hole evenly. If it missed at wall we would yell at him to stop and check. It sure was fun to walk bare footed in the warm freshly plowed dirt and watch the birds following us trying to get the corn before it was covered up.

We sometimes would hike out to the pasture and bring in the cows for milking. We want to watch out and not step in the cowpies that were green and slimy.

Periodically, we would take fresh drinking water to the fields to our father who plowed in during the hot summer time. I can still see him in his dusty overhauls and sweaty shirt with a red face, piercing blue eyes and an old straw hat, waiting for us to bring the water. We would be singing at the top of his voice all alone, out in the big field, which seemed like miles and miles to us at the time. He would be driving two horses in a harness with the long lines hooked around his shoulders and just touching each rein to signal the well trained horses to turn right or left or stop. They would answer promptly to the commands of “gee” and “haw” for left and right. How impressed we were!

I remember too helping with the planting and cultivating of our garden every year. Dropping the seeds and potato buds into the fresh soil, keeping the weeds pulled out and watching in amazement as the tiny shoots came up like miracles and grew into fresh veggies. How we loved to got out to the garden and fix our sandwich on the spot with homemade bread, tomatoes and radishes.

As the eldest child, I dreaded the chore of helping my father get the tractor unstuck from the mud or dirt in bad weather. He would come to the house for me to drive the tractor while he hooked up the horses and tired to pull it out. How we would struggle to coordinate our efforts with the horses straining with all of their might and me trying to get the clutch in and give it enough gas. Most of the time we made it and even though I dreaded the responsibility of it, and the possibility of failure, it was exhilarating to succeed!

Submitted by MARI MAXINE KURTZ (CREEL) who grew up in Toulon, Illinois and now resides in Arizona. She is the mother of Sherry Withee, Pt. Lookout, MO 65726