During my “awakening”, probably at about 6 years old, I was at first, unaware that we were poor. My 3 brothers and I, along with our parents, lived in a small, 4-room, poorly-insulated house with no running water, bathroom, fridge, freezer, or furnace. Our winter heat came from a wood-burning stove. Our fridge was the cellar in summer and the back doorstep in winter. We awoke each winter morning to a frigid house. Our summer kitchen was the large woodshed attached to the south end of the house. I recall impatiently awaiting this move each year because it meant that summer had at last arrived. Our reading material consisted of comic books, and entertainment became colouring books, the radio, and outdoor play. Contrast those primitive conditions with those of to-day. It took some time, but my modern house is the ultimate in creature comforts compared to my childhood home. It is akin to comparing the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk to the newest airbus that can fly non-stop half-way round the world.
Because our large garden plot produced an annual supply of vegetables thanks to our mother, we had plenty to eat. She was a talented homemaker who knew how to process the food, as were many of the rural women of that era. Our huge vegetable garden, where I spent much time as a kid, and where I developed my life-long love of gardening, provided amply for us year-round. The canning, pickling, as well as the proper storage of root vegetables and apples were necessary skills that meant survival. Wild berry-picking in the surrounding fields and forest openings was a demanding, but essential chore, requiring the help of little hands as well, if the pails of fruit were to be turned into winter jam. Meat and sauerkraut were prepared, salted, and “put down” for the winter. Bread, buns, and pies, baked weekly were greedily devoured by growing kids. To-day all of our food intake and cravings are available in supermarkets 7 days a week just steps from our homes. Our culinary desires are limited only by our imagination and our pocketbook.
Farming in my area in the early 40s was on a subsistence level. Farmers worked long hours on small farms with simple implements and tools to provide a meager living for their families. It was not unusual to observe farmers still pitching hay onto horse-drawn wagons by hand. The only farm innovation that I noticed as a young child was the hay loader. Pulled behind the hay wagon, it resembled a praying mantis. As its wheels turned, slender, spiked slats caught the hay already raked into wind rows and moved it up a slanted escalator-like platform onto the wagon. It certainly beat pitching hay by hand.
Horse power was the main energy source to do the heavy work, making it virtually impossible for one farmer to expand to a large acreage. Milking a small herd was done by hand and the milk transported in 8-gallon cans to the cheese factory by horse and wagon, and by sleigh in winter.
The first memorable mass excitement for me took place in 1945 when I was 9 years old. I witnessed the boisterous crowds of people on the streets of Cornwall Ontario celebrating the end of the war. Like a gun going off, this joyous occasion signaled the beginning of transformative changes in my little farming community, and elsewhere, that never stopped.
