SENECA, Ill. — During the Great Depression, no one made fun of anyone else because everyone was in the same boat, said lifelong farmer Frank Huss about growing up during the nation’s financial disaster of the 1930s.

He was raised on an Illinois farm with his parents and two younger siblings.

“We didn’t have anything, and we couldn’t get anything,” said Huss, who celebrated his 95th birthday on March 9. “It was hard – really hard. People just helped themselves and planted produce so they could live. Some people had big gardens, except in the cities where things went kaflooey. The stock market went flat and people jumped out of windows. People lost everything they had.”

A John Deere retiree and father to six adult children, Huss still maintains a herd of 36-40 sheep on his 7-acre farmette along the Illinois River southwest of Seneca. Living alone since his wife passed away 11 years ago, he raises alfalfa on the acreage for winter feed for the sheep. He also plants a vegetable garden for himself, and many tomato plants to service his roadside tomato stand each summer.

The stock market crash of Oct. 29, 1929, probably precipitated the Great Depression in the United States. A large garden, livestock and crops split 50/50 with their landlord, kept the Huss family going during the Depression.

Huss said he and his siblings routinely carried water to the family garden to keep the plants alive and thriving. Garden hoses were a thing of the future.

“We hated doing it, but we had to survive. Our water pump was quite a ways from the garden, and we carried the water in 10-quart pails,” he said.

Huss recalled doing “everything,” like milking cows and working in the fields.

“We farmed with horses,” he said. “Anything that needed to be done, we had to do it. We heard talk about the Depression, but we were kids and didn’t pay much attention. We didn’t realize how bad it could get. It was just something we took for granted. We had a little allowance, and we’d go to town on a Saturday afternoon with 10-20 cents. You could buy a hell of a lot for 20 cents, then.”

The trio usually bought candy or ice cream cones. There were times they didn’t buy anything.

“We’d just look,” Huss said. “Sometimes Dad had problems giving us our allowance. He’d tell us we just haven’t got it this week, and that was it. We always got a little bit when we went to town, though.”

He and his siblings had their own jobs on the farm.

“We had a lot of work to do. Our horses survived the Depression,” he said. “It was later when we had trouble with them, sleeping sickness and such. We didn’t have the medications then that we have now.”

Some families got through on federal relief programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration. A CCC Camp was established at Illini State Park, west of Seneca at Marseilles. CCC enlistees dug ditches, cut trees, trimmed roadside brush and constructed picnic shelters and rest areas in the state parks. Their presence at Illini Park helped Huss forge a living.

“A farmer south of the camp raised a lot of hogs, and he got the deal to haul the garbage from the camp in 50-gallon barrels. I worked for him at the time, and we went to the camp every day with a team of horses and wagon to collect the garbage. The farmer had a yard full of pigs, and they’d eat that stuff. Raining or not, we went to the camp each day and hauled back the garbage to the hogs.”

Many Depression-era families traded homegrown produce and livestock for groceries at their neighborhood food stores.

“If you had a calf to butcher, you brought it in and you got groceries in exchange,” Huss said. “A lot of families ‘bought’ their groceries by trading chickens or eggs or whatever.”

His parents raised cattle and milked 10 cows. They churned their own butter from the cows’ milk, and skimmed off the thick, rich cream for home use via a mechanical separator with hand crank.

“The skimmed milk that we didn’t use we fed to our pigs,” he said. The pigs liked the milk. We never sold milk at that time. They didn’t have milk routes or anything then, so we fed the milk to the pigs. I began marketing milk quite a while later.”

Depression-era medical assistance usually consisted of the old country doctor who made house calls on the sick. Because medical knowledge was much more limited then, the sick were usually given treatments such as castor oil, Huss said.

Despite the hardships, Huss believes people enjoyed a better time then. No one was rushed, he said, and people were friendlier.

“The whole nation wasn’t in such a hurry,” he said. “There was more freedom. Today, average Americans are taxed more than they can afford. It’s just terrible – all these taxes. An old fella once told me they’re going to tax us so high China will walk in and take over.”

Huss believes the world has changed for the worst since the Great Depression.

“I hope it gets better, but it won’t until they get a (president) who has a little gumption. He’ll have to fight, because so many people are just lying around, doing what they want to do. He’s got to tell them they must do this, and this, and this,” said Huss, who was a World War II infantryman. “That’s what it was when the country went into WW II. The nation didn’t want to declare war. But the (president) said, ‘If we don’t, they’ll be right over here on top of us.’”

For 60 years or more, Huss has raised a flock of sheep on his farm. He’s always been fond of sheep, he said, and he does everything for them except the shearing, which he hires out.

Four of his ewes had twin lambs this spring, and one had quadruplets. Multiple births in sheep are quite rare, he noted.