Eighty-one years ago, I was a happy 4-year-old on a 100-acre, multi-purpose farm in central Indiana. We had sheep, hogs, chickens, a few cows, work horses and Border Collie dogs and, of course, many playful kittens and their very busy parents. I enjoyed picking fruit from our variety of trees and was often found stuffing my mouth with our many canning tomatoes on the edge of a cornfield near our old red barn.

Later, many large glass jars would be filled with this wonderful farm crop in preparation for our family’s coming winter. Often, more than 500 jars of home-grown fruits and vegetables, cooked meats, cherry jelly, Mom’s ketchup and Grandma’s concord grape wine would all be processed and stashed away in our cellar. That cool, dark sanctuary also held bushels of carrots and potatoes buried in fresh dirt for long winter preservation, plus crocks of 10-gallon jars of fresh cooking lard.

My father was a big strong man and had been a blacksmith shoeing horses during the conflict in Europe during World War I. When he returned home, he resumed farming.  In our kitchen loft was a special ridgepole with Dad’s blacksmithing iron hooks, and on them were hanging white cloth sacks containing his specially sugar-cured hams – our main feature when we had company for Sunday dinner. There also were hickory-smoked quarters from our own smokehouse. Occasionally, neighbors would ask to use it for their own meat smoking. Therefore, we would always have extra smoked meat on the table or an extra dollar in our pocket for a rare treat from the huckster wagon.

So, what is a huckster wagon? Well, when I was that country 4-year-old, I waited weekly for the “modernized” open-bed Model A truck to pull up under our front gate shade tree so my mother could replace whatever kitchen staple had become depleted. Household items, cleaning supplies and a few toys were the usual stock of this store-on-wheels, sent out by one of the four grocery stores in our nearby town of about 40 residents. This local center also had a filling station and garage, a hardware store, a post office, a furniture repair and refinishing shop, a bank, drugstore, fire station, the party-line telephone switchboard, three churches and a town hall. Saturday night saw farm families gathering on benches around a warm stove in the back of the grocery stores where they visited with neighbors after an always busy week. I am reminded of these long-gone days when I look upon my fireplace mantle and see an aging paper mache Santa, given to me as a child by our local huckster.

Joining this traveling convenience was the bi-weekly Omar Bakery deliveries for our bread and pastries. Believe me, there have never been butterscotch cookies that can match Omar at my house. We also had Fuller Brush salesmen and the Watkins dealer make other deliveries to our door.  Trips to town were less frequent due to our workload at home. The feed dealers also made deliveries for preferred farm animal needs. However, for the cats Mother made extra gravy which they loved, and there were always table scraps for the dogs.

I loved our old kitchen wood range, where clabbered milk simmered on a back burner lid for our country cottage cheese. That big, tall iron cookstove had a 5-gallon hot water tank mounted on the far end for all our scrubbing and dish washing, plus the tea kettle and washer tub for laundry and bathing. Yes, one needed to plan for personal schedules involving hot water.

Darkness brought the family together around our living room heating stove, often discussing a new baby lamb which was probably rattling around in the metal wash tub behind the stove. Later Dad would reach for the ever-present pan of fresh apples, awaiting his peeling knife. There was just nothing as special in our day than him handing us each that warm, juicy slice of ripe apple. After the last bucket of coal was brought in from the shed and the stove was stoked for the night, Mother spoon-fed the sleepy baby lamb its warmed milk, and we all headed for our welcoming beds.

Now coming back to the present, after experiencing many wonderful chapters in my busy adult life, why am I writing this? Because I am currently living again on that same farm of my childhood, along with my current band of sheep, guardian dogs and happy cats. Is our world the same?  In our over-populated, hectic fast-paced world of today, there is just no substitute for living where one can watch each glorious sunrise emerge above a peaceful woods….and later, see that day fade to darkness through a blaze of colorful promise.

Written by Eileen McLaughlin, of Moveta Branch Farm e-mail: polarbearmc@frontiernet.net 

Share your memories of growing up on a famrm with readers by sending stories to Connie Swaim at connie@farmworldonline.com