This display of women who helped farm the land and settle North Dakota is the loudest applause to women in the nation. Here are just 11 of these women who caught my eye. Their perspective from childhood and young adult years gives us a first-person look at ND in the first half of the 20th century. Bet you know some in your family who could be added to this display for your state.
It had a 5″ sickle with a sliding blade that did the cutting. She could depress a foot lever to raise the bar and avoid rocks or other obstacles. The horses are wearing a net with dangling fringe to drive away flies and bugs, making the horse more comfortable during the long, hot days of making hay.
Her parents had laying chickens and raised their own pigs, keeping only the large ones because they didn’t have feed for the smaller ones. During the hot days, she and her brother had to pour water over the pigs to keep them cool enough so they didn’t die.
Her dad always figured out ways to pay for what they needed. Somehow he got wheat to take to the mill for grinding. He’d come back with about 600 pounds of flour to last them for the year.
They made everything from strudels, dumplings, and stirrum (like a pancake mixture that can be served in a variety of ways). Everything was canned so the family never went hungry. At Christmas the kids would get hard candy, oranges, and a banana, but the 4 kids would have to share. Her goal was to one day eat a whole banana by herself.
These in-laws came to this area of ND because of the homesteading. While on the road when they had to spend the night, they tipped over their wagon box and stayed under it until morning.
Someone had given them a cow so they had brought it with them. When Violet got married and moved out to the farm, she started out with an orange crate for a wash basin.
They sat underneath the window so they wouldn’t see the dirt and dust storm. Then their parents stuck towels under the doors and window sills to keep out as much dust as possible. Her older brothers must have been in the barn, but the younger ones ran for the house when they saw the dirt coming.
And then the grasshoppers. Her dad made a gunny sack with a wire around it. She and her sister Alma took a side each to run through the high grass to fill up the bag with grasshoppers. They dumped them into a barrel that their dad lit with gas.
The cows had to eat thistles and tumble weeds. Any money her parents had went for providing food. They ate fish and bread, which is why she still doesn’t like fish.
After the threshing crew finished eating, the men would rest on the lawn between the house and the summer kitchen. The horses rested too.
The butchering was also done in the summer kitchen after the kids hauled water inside to heat on the cook stove. The summer kitchen was where they did their laundry with a gas washing machine; the exhaust pipe came out of a hole in the wall that made the whole yard blue with smoke.
During the hot summer days, they’d can beets and leave pies, bread, and kuchen on the window sill to cool. The family finally go a kerosene refrigerator in the mid-1940s. A last they had ice cubes for fresh squeezed lemonade. The smell of freshly baked cookies was a wonderful scent as they came home from country school; the cookies were tender, light, and delicious.
Her first year of teaching, a little child came up to her complaining of not feeling well and then threw up all over her lovely dress. After that, Mary Ann said she never let a child talk to her directly again.
First they were hired as babysitters but never got to hold the baby. Instead they fed the cattle and the hogs, take care of the chickens, and gathered the eggs. With all of the extra farm workers during the summer, they also had to help prepare a big meal for the middle of the day. Their only pay was a quart of cream once in awhile.
When she was older and the grain had to harvested with a machine called a header, she had to work on the header box where grain was thrown into a wagon with 1 side higher than the other side.
She and her siblings were working for her wealthy uncle. His educated kids didn’t have to work on the farm, but “us dumb little farm kids” had to work. At the end of summer when she was ready to return home, they were only taken as far as her Uncle Gottlieb’s home since her uncle knew they weren’t going to pay her enough and her father would be upset. They did put some money into an envelope and gave it to her. This was her pay for 3 months of work.
They let her off work a week after school had started, so her dad had to come to his brother’s to get her. Inside the envelope was $15 [this amount would have been about $223 in 1925; of course, the uncle had provided room and board during the summer]. Dad wasn’t happy!
To feed the small calves, they put their 2 fingers into their mouth to teach them how to suck. Then they spread their fingers so milk could come through. When her siblings got older, they started using a metal bucket with a big nipple on the front so the calves could suck it. [I remember feeding baby lamps with a bottle on my Aunt Leah’s farm in southern Iowa during the 1950s].
Even when school started in the fall, she’d join her dad going to the coal mines on Saturdays. When they’d return, she helped him shovel all the coal into the coal chutes of people who needed coal. If the coal fell out of reach, she would have to push it back over she he could get it into the chute faster.
She enjoyed working with her dad because he wouldn’t scold her like her mom would. As she and her sister got older, they teased their mom about her scolding, and her mom said, “You got by with a lot of things because of her dad.” Sound familiar?
Her mother then bought everything Alice needed for her kitchen, plus a washtub. Her husband soon went to town and bought a new Maytag washing machine with the motor for her that made so much noise.
Alice and her husband lived on her parents’ farm for about 5 years. When her brother got married, they had to move to their own farm that they rented for about 3 years before they could buy their own. They didn’t have electricity until they moved to the farm they rented. But that house had mice too. It was insulated with ash, so when they moved the refrigerator, they had to shovel up the ash from the insulation.
They burned coal in a heating stove right in the small kitchen. When they got the cook stove, she was able to really cook and keep the house warm.
Everyone had a big garden, and much of the summer was spent canning. Since the garden was close to the farm, Arlene remembers carrying water from the stock tank where it wasn’t so terribly cold. Her mother believed that tepid water was better for the plants than ice cold water. Arlene and her sister would dip the pails into the tank and run to the garden where her mother would put it where she needed it.
Arlene hated going to the root cellar because of the salamanders crawling around, so Marty would go down and hand Arlene what their mother wanted. Marty was the gutsy one, according to Arlene. Crickets would be on the wall and then would bounce off. Arlene was afraid they’d land on her maybe kill her or something. The fears of childhood.
Eldena remembers her mom collecting thistles. They were something to burn in the winter when nothing else was growing during the severe drought. Her mom’s job was was to pick up thistles that had blown into the fence lines, as well as gathering dry manure piles in the pasture so they could keep warm in the winter. Eldena’s mom knew how tough life was. When they were in the Depression, nothing would grow; there was just no rain.
So many other women had stories in this exhibit that I could have shared with you, but these were my favorites.
Now we’re onto another museum in the town of Pembina that’s right on the border with Canada. We’ve heard so much about this town, that it’ll be good to see it in person.
