Hmm, from a question about beet greens
Feb. 14th, 2005 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsandersonMy mother always loved to garden, and we always had a huge garden, some small part of which we planted and all of which we didn't plant that we tried to keep black. It was probably a block long and half a block wide. It ran between the barn on the east and the west shelterbelt of trees. To the south of it was a cow pasture, that frequently filled with water in the spring or after a big rain. The south part rarely got planted, and if it did, it guaranteed a gully washer, that put much of it under water for too long. Gardening always started late, after my mother would talk my dad into running the 5-bottom plow through. As a result, nothing in the garden was ever a perennial. It all went under the plow in the spring.
In the middle of the two rectangles that made up the garden, there was a row of box elder trees that had volunteered, and to the north of the garden was another pair or so of box elder trees, some caragana with yellow flowers in the spring and green pea-like seed pods that unrolled with a snap in the fall, a shop, and two garages. If you've seen box elders grow, they fall down as much as they grow up. The whole tree seems always on the verge of failure, and why the left them there, I'll never know. But, people who lived in the '30s looked at trees quite differently than those of us not born in drought and bad times.
A tall white wood fence ran from the north edge of the barn to the shop. There was a pair of trees beside the fence to the east, one ash, I think and the other box elder. The shop was a ramshackle structure built on the back of my grandfather's double garage, which housed an old Ford (probably a Model A) when I was very young, then a 53 Chevy, and finally a '68 Mailibu which I drove after he died. A low white wood fence ran from before the garage, to my father's garage. There was a willow tree that tried to grow between the garages. Some buffalo berries (at least that's what we called them) kept trying to grow in back of the fence east of the first garage. East of the fence and east of the barn, there was pasture when I was young and then plowed fields of flat black earth. A mile down, my great uncles lived until they lost the farm where my grandfather had lived, and my great-grandmother lived when I was young.
North of the garden by the house I lived in, there was two juneberry bushes, and a large, long hedge of lilac, mostly purple and one white lilac. Neither end of the plot was considered propitious. Too near the barn, fence and trees seemed to not fare as well as things planted in the middle. Too near the cow pasture, and the cows would reach across to snag errant leaves. To close to the trees on the west, and they shaded the area and sucked the soil dry.
There was really no reliable water on the farm, just several huge wells that had been dug for watering animals. The curbs were easily three or four foot across. One had a windmill on it. The rest had either electric pump jacks, or hand pumps. When it got dry and you wanted water, they wouldn't have much. There was also a well in the basement of the house. For much of my youth, it wasn't used, although it would sometimes fill the basement with water in the spring or after a big rain. There was one well to the west that my father eventually laid pipe to and had fed into the house. It was considered drinkable water, although there was a cow pasture to the west of it -- the short end of the "L" that looped back around the garden, west of the shelterbelt. It also didn't have much water in it, and wasn't useable in the spring when the pasture would flood up to the well. It used to have an odd double cylinder hand pump on it that seemed more like a torture instrument than a reliable method of pumping water.
With a regular hand pump, the weight of the handle and the rod going down to the piston counteract the weight of the water you pump up. With the double pump, each movement of the handle (up and down) was filling and lifting one cylinder so it was like working all the time instead of working half the time as it felt on a regular pump. None of the hand pumps took a hose. They just dumped out or into a piece of pipe. The two wells in back of the barn were too far and downhill from the garden. There was no way to get water from them, and most of the summer, they would have a hard time providing water for the livestock.
I always loved the windmill, because it ran itself. In North Dakota, there was never any question about the wind not blowing. And, with a ditch, I could get the water to the garden. It was probably about the only thing I like to do in the garden.
In the middle of the two rectangles that made up the garden, there was a row of box elder trees that had volunteered, and to the north of the garden was another pair or so of box elder trees, some caragana with yellow flowers in the spring and green pea-like seed pods that unrolled with a snap in the fall, a shop, and two garages. If you've seen box elders grow, they fall down as much as they grow up. The whole tree seems always on the verge of failure, and why the left them there, I'll never know. But, people who lived in the '30s looked at trees quite differently than those of us not born in drought and bad times.
A tall white wood fence ran from the north edge of the barn to the shop. There was a pair of trees beside the fence to the east, one ash, I think and the other box elder. The shop was a ramshackle structure built on the back of my grandfather's double garage, which housed an old Ford (probably a Model A) when I was very young, then a 53 Chevy, and finally a '68 Mailibu which I drove after he died. A low white wood fence ran from before the garage, to my father's garage. There was a willow tree that tried to grow between the garages. Some buffalo berries (at least that's what we called them) kept trying to grow in back of the fence east of the first garage. East of the fence and east of the barn, there was pasture when I was young and then plowed fields of flat black earth. A mile down, my great uncles lived until they lost the farm where my grandfather had lived, and my great-grandmother lived when I was young.
North of the garden by the house I lived in, there was two juneberry bushes, and a large, long hedge of lilac, mostly purple and one white lilac. Neither end of the plot was considered propitious. Too near the barn, fence and trees seemed to not fare as well as things planted in the middle. Too near the cow pasture, and the cows would reach across to snag errant leaves. To close to the trees on the west, and they shaded the area and sucked the soil dry.
There was really no reliable water on the farm, just several huge wells that had been dug for watering animals. The curbs were easily three or four foot across. One had a windmill on it. The rest had either electric pump jacks, or hand pumps. When it got dry and you wanted water, they wouldn't have much. There was also a well in the basement of the house. For much of my youth, it wasn't used, although it would sometimes fill the basement with water in the spring or after a big rain. There was one well to the west that my father eventually laid pipe to and had fed into the house. It was considered drinkable water, although there was a cow pasture to the west of it -- the short end of the "L" that looped back around the garden, west of the shelterbelt. It also didn't have much water in it, and wasn't useable in the spring when the pasture would flood up to the well. It used to have an odd double cylinder hand pump on it that seemed more like a torture instrument than a reliable method of pumping water.
With a regular hand pump, the weight of the handle and the rod going down to the piston counteract the weight of the water you pump up. With the double pump, each movement of the handle (up and down) was filling and lifting one cylinder so it was like working all the time instead of working half the time as it felt on a regular pump. None of the hand pumps took a hose. They just dumped out or into a piece of pipe. The two wells in back of the barn were too far and downhill from the garden. There was no way to get water from them, and most of the summer, they would have a hard time providing water for the livestock.
I always loved the windmill, because it ran itself. In North Dakota, there was never any question about the wind not blowing. And, with a ditch, I could get the water to the garden. It was probably about the only thing I like to do in the garden.
