MY MOTHER THE FARM WIFE

In a sense, my mother was not the epitome of a farmer’s wife. For that matter, my dad wasn’t the epitome of a farmer either. We had a life in town. But my mother appreciated land ownership and the small farm as a way of life and stepped up to help my dad when he needed it.

When I was very young, Mother didn’t have a role at the farm. Grandma Ina and Aunt Lynn (Myrtle) lived here, and my dad came on weekends to bring groceries and do the chores. Mother stayed in town to care for the family. Mother was a good cook – a job requirement for a farmer’s wife – and on summer Sundays, she would fix dinner in her kitchen and carry it to the farm. I can still remember the aroma of fried chicken mingled with country dust as we drove up the Gilbert Grade. (When I was very small, I rode “safely” behind Mother’s shoulder.) And as we drove, she taught me nursery rhymes. She was a great believer in the importance of early memory work, and she considered the ability to recite nursery rhymes a must in any child’s early education.

 

And there would be a pie for dessert. My dad appreciated Mother’s delicate, flaky crust. They both liked lemon meringue pie, which later became lemon chiffon pie, but Mother also baked fruit pies in season. Her favorite pie was made with transparent apples.

Grandma Ina passed away in 1957, and then Aunt Lynn moved away. Chuck, my dad’s chief farm hand, graduated from the University of Idaho in 1958 and that summer was the end of his regular involvement in harvest, I believe. So the summer of 1959, Daddy had to have help with harvest, and my half-sister Nina agreed to ride the combine for him. Mother and I also stayed at the farm to cook, keep house, and look after Polly, Nina’s baby, who was just a year old. And, Mother also drove the lentils to the grain elevator, the Nezperce Rochdale, in Daddy’s 1956 Ford pick-up.

My mother had a well-defined sense of herself – of her role as a woman, and I'm sure she didn't think she should have to haul the lentils to Nezperce. But she also had a sense of duty, so she complied. It was stress for her, but she did it because it was necessary. I wasn’t quite ten, and she refused to leave me alone at the farmhouse with Polly, so when she had to leave, we went with her. The round trip probably took an hour and a half, and we didn’t dally because we only had the one hauling vehicle. We had to get back to the farm so that Daddy could empty the hopper.

One time we made the trip to Nezperce, weighed in, went to the elevator where they dumped our load, and then headed back to the farm. “Kathy!” Mother suddenly exclaimed, “we forgot to weigh out!” We should have returned right then to the elevator. At that point the man at the scales probably could have adjusted for a gallon or two of gas and that would have been that. But that’s not the decision Mother made. She thought of my dad expecting our return, probably ready to empty the hopper, no way to get word to him about a delay, and she decided to continue to the farm. She undoubtedly also hated to face the man at the elevator. Daddy later called the Rochldale to “fess up,” as it were.

Were those the “good old days?” I don’t think so. The good old days were already long gone. Ours was a very small operation. Those farmers wanting to continue were buying more land. It was a transitional time for us – a time of coming to grips with the fact that we couldn't continue this way forever. KW

[The pictures were all taken in 1959. 1) The house in town, a Sears Craftsman. 2) A four-generation picture: Grandpa C.O. Portfors, my mother Dorothy Dobson, Polly and Nina Profitt. 3) Nina and Polly sitting on the wall at the Orofino house. 4) Half-sister Joni on the combine while her husband Pat Nunan operates the D2 Caterpillar. This is the only picture I have at this time that illustrates the harvest process. You can see the pick-up in the background. I don't remember how the old wagon was used. (Take it, Chuck.)  5) Family lounging comfortably in the yard at the farm. The building is Ina's first house, which Daddy used as a machine shed. The tree is not the silver maple of today.]