Workday Wednesday: Tilling the Soil, Part 1

Barns on the Old Homeplace in Jasper County, Iowa, circa 1996.
Barns on the Homeplace in Jasper County, Iowa, circa 1996.

Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

I’ve got dirt under my fingernails and mud caked to the lugs of my work boots. My body aches, but it is the tired throb of hard physical work well done. My soul is satisfied and my heart filled with promise, too, for I have been gardening.

Yes, technically it is not ‘dirt’ under my fingernails- the ‘dirt’ under one’s fingernails would actually be the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life. The phrase, however, has more literary panache than ‘soil’ under my fingernails. Though that is what was actually there- soil, a living, breathing organism that gives us all our very life.

I do say ‘was’ there, because I have actually cleaned up since digging and fertilizing and planting and mulching and watering. I did shirk a bit on the watering- I am letting Mother Nature mostly take care of it since big thunderstorms are forecast for tonight. While I was working, though, my connection to the earth and to my ancestors filled me. Much of this post was composed in my head as I listened to pileated woodpeckers announcing their territory. I observed a jagged slime path glisten in the sun as it lengthened, carrying a snail toward my tender young plants for a delightful repast. I rescued a plump Lumbricus to be an Earthworm Engineer for me 24/7/365 and create tunnels for water and nutrients while creating rich soil and fertilizer for my new gardens. I gently tucked in my new plants with compost and topsoil, mulch on top, using my hands for a final grounding into the earth so the roots could grow well and heartily. How many times had my ancestors done the same?

The "Homeplace" of george A. Roberts and Ella V. Daniel, Jasper County, Iowa. Image taken circa 1900 and hand colored.
The “Homeplace” of George A. Roberts and Ella V. Daniel, Jasper County, Iowa. Image taken circa 1900 and hand colored.

So many of our ancestors were farmers, and they may have not waxed poetic at the long, back-breaking labor required to feed their families and take produce to market to provide supplies into the next crop year. But they loved the soil and the earth- Edith Roberts Luck would tell stories of her father and his connection to the land, and one could see it in her as well. In addition to the crops and animals grown on the farm, she gardened to supply food for the family, like most women with a patch of land did in bygone years. She had a big garden at the family farm, a smaller garden on land she rented at the edge of town, and then a garden at her house that took up most of the back yard of her little Craftsman bungalow in Newton, Iowa.

Edith Roberts Luck in her garden, circa 1980s?
Edith Roberts Luck in her garden, circa 1980s?

She grew vegetables such as Burpee Big Boy tomatoes- so good warm from the field that they were a meal in themselves, requiring just a touch of salt to make one’s taste buds burst with joy. Big ears of corn would be snapped off the tall, big-leaved plant, with a pot of boiling water already on the stove when we got back from picking; one shucked quickly and dropped the ears into the scalding water to stop the change from sugar to starch that happens the moment an ear of corn is severed from its stalk… they were so full of milky sweetness that an ear only required a hint of butter. Digging little red potatoes was amazing as a child- how could roots become such deliciousness? Edith grew more raspberries and strawberries than a family could eat, but that was so she could share with the birds, freeze some to enjoy during the long cold Iowa winter, and then there was the amount she knew would be eaten while harvesting, never even making it to the table.

Edith Roberts Luck in her garden with the fruit of her labor, circa 1980s?
Edith Roberts Luck in her garden with the fruit of her labor, circa 1980s?

Beautiful cut flowers filled Edith’s home with color and scent, and no visit out to one of the gardens would end before a bouquet was cut of irises, gladiolas, roses, or one of many other flowers she grew in rows just for cutting. She always had little vases on a windowsill or side table too- perfect for grandchildren to fill with pansies, or the beautiful-to-us clover and dandelions that plagued her suburban yard. Those little painted glass vases we filled, probably from the Five & Dime, are priceless to us today. It always amazed me that she spent time and energy on growing flowers rather than only food, practical woman that she was. But throughout history, women would grow flowers and gather them to make home smell just a bit sweeter, make a log cabin a bit warmer to one’s heart, and life just a bit prettier.

So many of today’s children do not have opportunities to grow plants, to see where our food really comes from- that it doesn’t just magically appear in the supermarket- or to appreciate soil for the life-giving properties it has. Digging in the soil and observing those who call it home was a favorite pastime for our son. When he was just five and visited the family farm in Iowa, of course he had to take a bucket and shovel. Sitting in between rows of corn taller than himself near the old homeplace, he happily scooped the fertile soil into the bucket and held it in his hands. All of a sudden he looked panicked- “Mom, something is wrong with this soil.” (Yes, he really said ‘soil.’). “It’s black, not red like our soil. The corn won’t be able to grow very well.” Being raised on the red clay of the south, our son had only seen black soil in the flowers we potted together each spring. He was relieved to learn that the corn would grow even better in the richer, looser soil, but we did fill a jar, and brought it back with us as a reminder that our roots grew in that soil too.

 

Next: some of our farming ancestors.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Family photos.

 

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Thankful Thursday- Thankful for Geeks!

George A. Roberts, about 1900.
George A. Roberts, about 1900.

I am very thankful for my geek family, who have helped me make this blog a bit prettier and more functional than I could have done on my own. My dear husband and son are wonderfully computer literate, and especially talented when it comes to CSS and HTML. (I’m trying to learn it, but would just rather research and write.) Last night we got the pull-down menu mostly fixed under “Family Trees,”which used to be “Pedigrees.” (Sounds sort of stuffy British peerage so we changed the title.) It still doesn’t list the Lee-Alexander-Aiken family on the pull down, but you can access that branch if you just click on “Family Trees.” Clicking on a family from this page will take you to all the posts associated with that family. This is probably the best way to find pertinent-to-you posts, since there are so very many families discussed on this blog.

[Disclaimer: My dear husband and son would have made a much nicer blog if I had not been insistent on doing most of it with WordPress myself. I have tried not to bother them too much with blog fixing, so all poor qualities are due to my strong-willed German heritage, I suppose.]

 

George A. Roberts (1861-1939), above, was a bit of a geek in his day. As a farmer he had to be a tinkerer. He embraced new-fangled gadgets as well, and was one of the first in the area to have indoor plumbing and an automobile. His wife, Ella V. Daniel, was thrilled to finally have running water in the kitchen where she cooked for dozens of men at harvest season! I am sure our son is so handy partly because of George, plus from his father/my husband, who is descended from people who worked with their hands, like farmers and shoe-makers, and has a bit of German engineering genetics thrown in from somewhere, I am sure. Many trips in the stroller to Home Depot as a baby to get out of the house on a rainy day were probably helpful too- our son first counted to 100 sitting on the floor with big landscape spikes. (We did buy them and then he got to help use a sledgehammer…great fun.)

I am also thankful for Thomas MacEntee and his wonderful blogs, Hack Genealogy and GeneaBloggers. His webinars and shared information has done much to advance genealogical research, and get many of us to write blogs to share what we have learned.

One of those who shares her genealogy and writes it beautifully is Cynthia Mulcahy/Mulberrygrrl of We’re All Relative. I am not related but her amazing prose is inspiring to writers and does relate to many of the lines I am researching. I particularly enjoyed her recent post, “I’m Finally Embracing My Scots-Irish Ancestry.” She uses great images to illustrate her points, and she discusses many facts I had not known. This post mentions that the ‘Fighting Scots-Irish’ were enticed to America to be a ‘buffer’ between civilized cities and the wild frontier- so many of my ancestors were just those folks.

I cannot end this “Thankful Thursday” post without mentioning Jim Whitener, who pushed me into starting this blog after hearing yet another Legacy Family Tree Webinar on blogging how-to. I am looking forward to more posts on his family, when he has some time to write about his ancestors, i.e., when he is not enjoying his rich legacy of children and grandchildren. 😉

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) From our family photo treasure chest. This is one-thrid of a portrait of the three Roberts brothers, taken about 1900 in Newton, Jasper, Iowa.

Please contact us if you would like a higher resolution image.

Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 
We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.