Sunday, March 16, 2014

How Far Off the Farm Are You?

So I've been having a fascinating conversation with Rachel over at Growing Things and Making Things about the differences in traditions of food preparation and preservation between the UK and America.

It got me to thinking - just about everyone I know has farmers in their family tree, and not very far back. I think most people could find a farmer or two within a few generations. I guess I always assumed that this was the case for people all over the world - that we were pretty much an agricultural planet up until the past 100 years or so.


But, I'm wondering if that rule holds true throughout the world, or if the idea that farming was the predominant occupation a few generations back is uniquely American... we did have a LOT more available land than in some other parts of the world.


Or maybe this is just my own twisted idyllic picture of the past and the truth is far different even here.



So, I have a question for you - how far back in your family tree do you have to go to find a farmer? For me, it's 3-4 generations - it looks like this:


My mother's maternal grandparents were farmers - I remember her telling me a story about how a rabbit bit her once on her grandparent's farm, thus, rabbit stew was served that night for dinner!

I don't know about mom's paternal grandparents - she never talked about them, so I don't really even know if she knew them. But I know they were Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonites, so they couldn't have been terribly far off the farm.



My dad's mother was from Italy. I don't know what they did in the old country, though the area they came from was primarily sheep grazing country. But I know my Grandma's grandparents bought a farm once they got here - so that's great - great grandparents. Other than that, the Italian side of the family was mostly in the mining business.

My dad's paternal grandfather (who died long before my dad was born) was a saloon-keeper! No farming points there, but lots of character!


I can remember as a kid being really jealous of friends who has moms that tended large gardens and canned vegetables (yes "canning" means preserving them in glass jars for those of you across the pond - I have no idea why that word is used.)

I also had friends who would visit their grandparents "on the farm" every summer. They would come home with tales of adorable animals and mountains upon mountains of fresh sweet corn. Of course, had I known the fate of most of those cute animals, I might not have been quite so jealous!


Anyhow, I'm totally curious to know if your family has a history of farming or not, and if so, how far back. I'm just wondering if there are any trends in different parts of the world, and if a history of farming tradition or not has any influence on our views about things like food, gardening, canning etc.

So, if you wanna help me out by taking a totally unscientific little poll, leave a comment with info on where are you from, and how many generations you have to go back to find a farmer. I'd love to hear what you think about this whole crazy topic.

89 comments :

  1. I've done a bit of family tree research...my mum's dad was half American (his dad)- I have names of people on that side of the family, but no idea of professions. It'd be interesting to trace them back and see how/when they came to America. Papa's mum was English- her family seem to have been engineers/railway workers for a few generations.
    Mum's mum side of the family seem to have had a variety of professions, but with a lot of fishermen. They lived in costal towns, though, so not surprising.
    Not really any farmer points there!

    As for Dad's side of the family- I don't know much about his dad's ancestry, but his mum's family were agricultural labourers for as far back as I got with my research. Some were cowmen/stockmen, but none of them seemed to own a farm.

    I think the difference between the two families is that mum is from Hull, which is fairly industrial, and a port, whereas dad is from rural Suffolk, where a lot of the population would have been agricultural laborers, going back goodness knows how long- hundreds of years! (though I've only got back as far as the mid 1800s).

    Not sure how this has influenced our food habits...though dad did work in the farming industry for 40 years and grows his own veg!

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    1. OK, you bring up some interesting points that I hadn't considered. First of all... fishing! Of course people have been fisherman since time immemorial! It just never crosses my mind since I've spent the vast majority of my life here in land-locked Colorado.

      And then, the idea of being an agricultural worker as opposed to actually owning the farm. I'm sure that was much more common throughout Europe than here. And in this country, anyone whose ancestors were brought over as African slaves most likely did agricultural work but certainly didn't own the farm. Similarly, many 20th immigrants from Mexico came here as migrant farm workers - just one notch above slaves on the social stratus IMHO.

      Oh, you make me realize how colored my views of the past are by my race and by the region of the world in which I live.

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    2. It's natural for your view to be coloured by what you know- though I imagine we'll all be finding out about lots of different strands of history from reading the comments this post!

      I'm not sure at what point the majority of people in the UK lived in towns- but more and more people left the countryside from around 1750 with the industrial revolution. (Although lots of people did live in towns and cities before that).
      I imagine that lots of people, even in towns, grew food if they had space, or kept a pig, but not full scale farming!

      (The above may not be 100% historically accurate- I am dredging it up from the depths of past studying...and it may have got mixed up and confused with 19th century novels!)

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    3. Ha! I have to admit that my knowledge of both English and European history is quite limited. It sorta starts at about WWI and before that is all a big blur of Celts, and Normans, and Vikings, and Kings, and feudalism and revolutions, with a bit of Jane Eyre thrown in for good measure. :-)

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    4. I should be more knowledgeable than I am, given that I have a degree in history! I was worryingly old when I finally learned the order things (romans, Vikings, for example) happened in!

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    5. Well, I think for me part of the problem is that they always teach history as a collection of dates to be memorized - but that doesn't really do anything to forward one's understanding of the big trends that were happening, or how people actually lived on a day to day basis - which is the interesting part as far as I'm concerned.

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    6. That sounds like bad history teaching! We studied things like the Industrial Revolution at school- which included dates, but also the changes which happened to society as a whole.

      Social history has become way more popular over the last few decades- you are not alone in finding it more interesting than the political and economic stuff!

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    7. Well.. when I was in high school there was this big push to make history more fun... so they had all of these classes that focused on one particular event or era, but nothing that ever tied it all together. The result was I studied WWII EVERY year and virtually nothing else!

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    8. Yuk! I never studied it..I studied Elizabeth I, medieval Spain and the English Civil War in upper school.

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    9. Wait.... there was an English Civil War? Seriously, this is the first I've heard of this. Oh my...

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    10. Yup- it happened during the 1640s when Parliament thought the king was being a bit too much of a dictator and was maybe a bit Catholic, and Charles I (the king) thought he didn't need to do what Parliament wanted because he was, well, the king.
      Charles I was executed for treason in 1649; then followed the Commonwealth (rule by Parliament) and the Protectorate (rule by Oliver Cromwell, as Parliament bickered too much to run the country properly).
      When Cromwell died, his son Richard took over, but he was rubbish, so some of the aristocracy decided to go and get Charles I's son back from exile in Europe and ask him to be Charles II. He came back, which is known as the Restoration, in 1660. He wasn't allowed as much free reign as his dad, though, and spent him time having many mistresses.

      I tend to forget that there was an American Civil War and just call the English on 'the Civil War' :)

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    11. Wow, I had no idea! I can never figure out why people think that the whole Catholic thing is worth killing people over... Wait... I saw a movie once called "Lady Jane" with Helena Bohnam Carter - was that about this episode or was that a different hubbub about whether or not the wine really turns into blood?

      Anyhow, I think most people probably refer to the civil war in their own country as THE civil war.

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    12. Googled the film- 'Lady Jane' is based on an earlier hubbub- after the death of Henry VIII and his only son Edward. After Lady Jane Grey's few days of reign, throne was inherited by Mary (Catholic) and then by her half sister Elizabeth I (Protestant). Elizabeth was troubled throughout her reign by Mary Queen of Scots (Catholic); when Elizabeth died, Mary Queen of Scots' son James inherited the English throne (he was already King of Scotland). Anyway, James' son Charles was the Charles I who got his head chopped off- I know it is rambling, but that's the timeline!

      Religion in all forms seems to be a good excuse to have a fight about things and kill lots of people.. the English Civil War was a bit about religion, but also about the right of people to not be ruled by someone who thought he had the Divine Right of Kings to do what the hell he wanted. I find it really interesting as a period of history, because a lot of ideas that I instinctively think of as modern seen to be around in the 17th century- such as the Diggers who wanted to all live equally on farms, in a hippy/communist sort of way.

      Anyway, here endeth the history ramble :)

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    13. Wow! 17th century hippies! Who knew? :-)

      BTW, I am duly impressed that you can rattle off the kings and queens like that. There's NO WAY I could come close, even with my own country. Let's see... there was George Washington, then John Adams, Thomas Jefferson is in there somewhere... then... er... um... a bunch of guys... then Lincoln, then... it becomes fuzzy again until FDR. Lordy!

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    14. My knowledge of kings is great for a really specific period..Henry VII-Charles II (1485-1685). Other than that it's embarrassingly vague- I have to check Wikipedia to work out which George/Henry was alive when. I do have a very useful wooden ruler with the rulers on it (a ruler ruler, geddit?!) and their dates.

      I am very rubbish at US presidents...Lincoln...big gap...Bush senior..gap?..Clinton, Dubya, Obama...

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    15. Well, I have this theory. Every generation has a harder time learning history than did the generation before because there's more of it to learn! Anyhow, I think there are limits to how much information the human brain can hold and I for one am very grateful that the internets are always just a click away to get me the answers! :-)

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  2. Born on a farm in rural Nova Scotia. Left there with my parents when I was 10, as Mom had just about "bought the farm" due to bowel cancer. Moved to Ontario.
    Curiously enough, one of my older brothers bought a farm about 30 years ago, in spite of the fact that he and my other older siblings couldn't WAIT to get off the farm.
    So I suppose it's in the blood. Or something.

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    1. Ha! Now that's interesting because when I hear "Nova Scotia" the first thing that comes to mind is fishing! But I'm learning that Canada has deep agricultural roots as well. Hmmmm

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  3. As far as I know there have been no farmers on my mom's side of the family. My great grandparents immigrated from Germany where they did other work (all I can remember is one was a Baroness). We don't know much of my dad's side of the family, but from what we know, there weren't any farmers either. I think The Husband's mom's side may have had farmers since they are from Iowa, but that's about as close as we come to having farmers in our families.

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    1. Interesting. I'm betting there's some sort of a correlation between the time period of immigration, as well as where people settled, with whether or not they took up farming. In my case, my dad's ancestors all came over as part of the mining boom in the very early 20th century, but my Mom's ancestors came over much, much earlier.

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  4. I grew up in rural WV and just about everyone there is a farmer. Very few families are able to make their living this way, but it certainly supplements their income, in addition to providing much of their food. My father grew up on a farm and my mother lived on different farms while growing up. She and her mother lived with whoever would take them in. Everyone before them were farmers with some also doing saw mill work. Today two of my uncles are farmers. My father's job took him to town (pop. 3000). However, he partnered with friends who lived in the country and we had at least an acre garden most years. He also hunted to provide meat for us. I guess you might say, we lived a rural life and lived at least partially off the land just like most people around us.

    It's an interesting question that you asked because there are lot's of variables to consider. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

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    1. Wow... so it sounds like the farming tradition is still very much alive and well in West Virginia. It surprises and saddens me to think that people can't support themselves through farming. It shouldn't be so.

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  5. Very far away.

    My mom did nursing related stuff; my dad did Air Force, sales/leasing, and now has his own energy management business.

    My parents' dads were both engineers. Dad's mom was a typist, not sure about Mom's mom.

    My great grandparents also lived in the big city when I knew them--not sure what they did. Great Grandma M came from "what is now Poland." What was once Germany? Her husband ran away in the Depression and was never seen (by her) again. Scary times.

    I did get some old-time skills from my mom, though--cooking, embroidery, knitting, and frugal living. But also reading, Girl Scouting, and the side stroke. Dad taught me how to dive and always made sure we lived near swimming pools. We moved a LOT (even after Dad got out of the military), but we always lived in apartments in suburbs of big cities.

    My boyfriend is closer, though. His parents were both teachers, but they also grew lots of stuff and he even had to help with chickens and cows (both of which he hates to this day and is happy to eat, especially chickens). I know one of his great grandfathers lost everything in the stock market crash except one piece of land in the middle of nowhere, Texas, so he drove the family to that piece of land. They knew nothing about farming, but their neighbors helped them out. My boyfriend's grandfather married one of the neighbor daughters, but everyone agrees he should have waited for the younger, nicer one to become available.

    On career interests tests, farming shows up right near the bottom for me, just above military. I'm SO glad other people are doing my farming for me. So, so glad. Not only do I dislike the weeding and the killing and the big machinery, I also hate the way you can't count on the weather but you still have to make horrible payments for your land or tractors or whatever, and I don't even like fresh delicious foods--I like them way overly processed.

    I am 51 years old (when my grandma was my age, she already had all her children and all her grandchildren), so farming is pretty far back in my family.

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    1. Wow... what a story about the folks who ended up as farmers in Texas due to financial circumstances.

      But in a funny roundabout way, their story is similar to that of many immigrants who came over much earlier. I think that lots of "pioneers" took up farming not necessarily because they had any experience with it, or because they were particularly drawn to it, but simply because through the Homestead Act, farming was the opportunity that was available to them.

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    2. Yes, that makes good sense!

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  6. I lived with my grandparents on a farm and married my husband who lived on a farm. We have always lived in major cities in the 42 years of our marriage BUT we have a farm in the area my husband grew up. A farmer farms it for us and we visit there several times a year. I love the idea of land producing food and the beauty of the country. (yes, to me farms are pretty). So we aren't removed at all. I plan on leaving our farm to my kids and hope they also, learn to love it.

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    1. OK... now there's a twist that I also hadn't considered. You own a farm but don't live on it. I, too, think that farms are beautiful.

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  7. I've always thought that every family could write a novel based on their own particular family history. So interesting to read the comments! My (very!) German grandfather farmed, although that wasn't his only occupation--he was a postal worker, among other things. His parents came over from Germany and were very strict--the boys in the family would be given bullets for their guns and if they didn't bring home the same number of dead animals as bullets, they would get a whipping for wasting the bullets. The family story is that he was a great shot but also was good at using a slingshot as a backup. My maternal grandfather worked at the local power company but he and grandma kept a small farm with a few animals and a large garden, which provided much of their food. My mom grew up helping with the animals and made the mistake of naming the pig ("gub-gub") and getting attached to her ... she says she refused to eat "gub-gub" when the time came for butchering but never again did she make a pet out of a pig. On my husband's side, one grandfather was a preacher and one was a farmer. He has lots of extended family in Iowa and farming is a big way of life there. Both of our parents had large gardens to help supplement food supplies while we were growing up. My mom canned food but, oddly enough, I never learned to do it. My in-laws still have a huge garden (which we benefit from!). We live in suburbia and my husband, the frustrated farmer, gets an amazing amount of produce out of a relatively small patch of land. I have a huge appreciation for farming and farmers, but I have no romantic visions of the lifestyle--it's hard work and very dependent on the whims of weather.

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    1. OK... first of all, Holy Moly - every bullet must bring home food! Yikes! For some odd reason this reminds me of a Chris Rock comedy routine about gun control. He says we don't need "gun control" what we need is "bullet control" OMG - I'm laughing uncontrollably just thinking about it:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuX-nFmL0II

      Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be cut out for animal husbandry. Even if I didn't name them, there's just no way I wouldn't get attached. I think it would just break my heart in two.

      But, once again you point out that many farmers can't support themselves through their farming efforts. Not sure why, but that makes me really sad.

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    2. I live in a very agricultural area. While I see/hear of "hobby farming" here, most farming, both growing food and having animal stock, is done on a very big basis--think 400 milking cows, etc. I believe Michigan is the top producer of asparagus in the US ... in the top 3 or 5 for apples ... top 1 or 2 for blueberries ... we are supplying those specific foods for much of the US to eat. Each geographical area has its specialties--my in-laws live in Illinois and it's a boring drive through miles upon miles of corn and soybeans, but that's where much of those products come from. (I'm not disparaging Illinois--but there isn't much to look at when traveling through!) Other states have their specialties as well--it's amazing to think about one or two states providing, say, most of the oranges for the country.

      As far as the Canadian's agricultural roots--the vast majority of their population doesn't live in the really frigid areas. We border Ontario and there are a lot of farmers there.

      I hear ya on farmers not being able to support themselves on farming alone--my comments are just my way of thinking "aloud" that the face of farming has changed over the past century and if you are going to farm for a living, it seems like it needs to be on a big scale. What would be interesting would be to find out about organic farming and how big of a scale that is done on. Gogingham.com had a post awhile back where Sara, who hosts the site, visited an organic farm--you might want to check it out--their farming practices were fascinating to read about.

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    3. OK... I've gotta admit, I would never have imagined Michigan to be farm country. Not sure what I though folks in Michigan did... made cars maybe? I'm realizing that my mental images of soooo many places both in this country and outside are just way, waaaaay off.

      I hear you about the large scale farm thing, but I guess I always thought that family farms used to support themselves until the big corporations got involved and ran everybody else out of business. But maybe that's not the case, and scale has always been required to make a go out of farming? Hmmmm...

      Anyhow, thanks for the tip about gogingham.com, I will go check it out!

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    4. You are accurate about car manufacturing. My dad is a retired GM employee--but there's an awful lot of farmland between Detroit/Flint/Lansing/Saginaw. I currently live on the west side of the state and we have a mini-ecosystem because of the moderating waters of Lake Michigan. It's great for a lot of fruit crops--cherries, blueberries, apples--in fact, there is a U-pick blueberry field within walking distance of my house. And while my dad worked in car manufacturing, his best friend was a dairy farmer with a huge operation (and raised much of his own grain for feed). It's really quite a paradox.

      Everyone seems to be enjoying this topic! Thanks for bringing something fun to the table for discussion!

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    5. OK... here's how bad my geographical knowledge is... I had to go look at a map to figure out exactly where Michigan was, and to my great surprise discovered that I had totally confused it with Minnesota. Actually, I had the shape right, just the location wrong. They're both M states up in that blur of the northern Midwest. Oh my... And I'm also shocked to see that there is a good sized chunk of Canada that's further south than the entire northwest section of the US. Hmm.....

      Anyhow, I went to school in upstate NY, and there was a lot of farm country there... and now that I see the map, Michigan and New York are practically at the same latitude. So perhaps you're not quite as far into the frozen tundra as I had imagined. Errrr... wait... what about that hunk above lake Michigan - is that part of Michigan too, or is it Canada? Good GAWD... this is embarrassing!

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    6. I needed a laugh today! And you had me laughing out loud! Michigan is the "great lake state"--the southern part of the state looks like a mitten surrounded by water. That's called the lower peninsula. The land mass above the mitten is the upper peninsula and the body of water on top of it is Lake Superior--and above THAT is Canada. I always thought we were one of the easy states to pick out (remember those "label the states" tests in elementary school?), kind of like Florida or Maine or California. Now YOU, you live in one of those boxes further west, although that's not nearly as difficult to remember as all those little bitty states on the east coast.

      I find geography is hard to remember unless I have something to associate it with--I've been there, or I know somebody there ... while I'm not too bad at US geography, don't ask me about world geography! Ack! Anyway, I laughed at your description of us in the frozen tundra because my M-I-L is convinced that as soon as you cross the border into our state, it's a howling blizzard (she may have had a point this past winter ... ).

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    7. I had a friend in college who claimed that I was put on this earth for the sole purpose of amusing him - I'm happy to oblige. :-)

      Anyhow, the only reason I knew that Michigan was mitten shaped was because of the last presidential election - Mitt Romney being from there... Mitt, mitten... get it? But I guess the upper peninsula part was lost on me. And what was all that about the trees being "just the right height" there?!? Did that mean anything to people who are actually from Michigan, or was it just another of his crazy attempts to relate to "normal" people?

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    8. I don't remember that part of the campaign. I hate campaigning and try to just stick with the candidate's platforms. I will never see campaigns run the way I think they should be run--first off, I would like to see political parties eliminated because it just makes people draw lines in the sand and not work together ... I would like to see that each candidate is allowed a certain campaign budget and not be allowed to go over it so we eliminate people getting elected because they are rich or they have a lot of rich friends ... and to have campaigns stick just to the facts and "if you can't say something nice about your opponent, don't say anything at all" .... and I think we superficial Americans are taken in by how someone looks or "sells" themselves instead of their ability to get a job done with integrity so I'd like to minimize how much screen time they get ... but I'm living in a fantasy world. It's my happy place.

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    9. Oh, I wanna sign up for your world! Colorado was a "swing state" and it was absolutely brutal. You couldn't turn on the television or computer, or open a newspaper without being bombarded by ads telling you what a horrible person such and such was.

      And I totally agree about the political parties. It's starting to reach a degree of ridiculousness these days - people voting against legislation that they themselves wrote because "the party" has decided they're now against it. It just seems like our politicians are not really interested in governing anymore, and the only constituents they seem to care about are the big corporations who seem to control everything.

      Alas, I fear with the recent supreme court decisions allowing virtually unlimited corporate campaign money dumping, things are gonna get much, MUCH worse before they ever get better. Sigh.

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  8. Like "live and learn," I have great-grandparents on both sides of my family who were subsistence farmers (homesteaders). They got by with their own gardens, a few chickens, maybe a hog, fishing and digging clams, and picking up seasonal jobs. It was a hard life and they were very happy to leave it behind and move to city jobs in the next generation.

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    1. OK... so another example of the Canadian farming and homesteading tradition. Not sure why, but I just never associate Canada with agriculture. I guess I figured incorrectly that the growing season would just be too short up there to make it worthwhile.

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  9. Interesting question and sad to think I'm not really sure about all my great grandparents occupations. My paternal grandmother's family were farmers, but I think more of the raising enough to feed your family and buy the very basics kind. She grew up in a house without electricity or running water (a house I got to stand in several years ago.). My mother's grandparents who I got to know a bit, had and orchard and fruit/veg stand.

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    1. Interesting... so yet ANOTHER example of farmers who barely got by and/or needed supplemental income to make ends meet. And wow... how amazing to get to visit the house where your grandparents lived. My paternal grandmother's home in Leadville is no longer standing, but I really want to take a trip up there and see where it was.

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  10. Since I have a 4x8 garden plot in my backyard, I get to count myself as a farmer, right? ;) haha Seriously, my parents have always grown stuff in the backyard and my grandparents were farmers - 5 acres, chickens, horses, shelves of canned food in the basement, etc. Some relatives continue the tradition and plenty do not. I do live in a rural area though.

    Some aspects of farming really appeal to me (growing stuff never fails to amaze me) but once you get to a certain level, it becomes very difficult to take a break. I like my freedom and asking your parents to water your mini-garden so you can go away for a long weekend is very different than asking them to milk your cow, water an acre of crops, and muck out the horse stalls.

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    1. OK... so another American with farming roots. Oh, how I would love to have horses. CatMan and I ride past some areas where people have horses, and there's on in particular that I always stop and pick some grass for because he lives in a dirt pen and has eaten every blade he can reach through the fence. I always say that I want to have a horse... then CatMan says to think about how hard it would be when your horse gets sick and dies. He's totally right, but still... even the smell of horses makes me happy.

      Of course you bring up an excellent point about not being able to take a break. I think I'd be ill suited for a life where I had to get up at dawn to take care of the animals every day!

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    2. The horse in the dirt pen might be in there because he has laminitis- which results in swelling in the membranes in the feet and can lead to permanent lameness. It is cause/exacerbated by too much rich grass, and thus some horses get turned out in dirt pens.
      (It might just be that his owners only have one field, though, and nothing to do with laminitis at all!!)

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    3. Well... he's lived in the same pen for 5 years now, and it's right behind their house, so I kinda think that's just all the property they have. Plus, the neighborhood kids told me that the owners said it was fine to feed him grass, so I think he's OK... but it is good to know.

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    4. I wouldn't have thought the odd handful of grass would have hurt, even if he was in a pen because of laminitis :) I'm sure he appreciates his grass in any case!

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    5. Well, at this point as soon as he sees me he comes running. It's very sweet, though I know it has everything to do with the grass and nothing to do with me, but he does let me pet him a bit as I feed him. I can only imagine how attached one would get to a horse if you got to ride it all the time.

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    6. Horses can be heartbreakers..and the vet bills can be pretty unlimited! I'm quite happy riding other people's horses- it has the added benefit of not having to deal with getting so attached..

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  11. I'm in England. I have to go back 6 generations on my dad's side before I find my first farmer and six on my mother's until I find a "hind" (which I believe was some kind of agricultural worker). So, just for a bit of an idea how far back that is, the hind was born in 1814 and the farmer in the late 1700s. One branch of my dad's family came over from Ireland though and I have not found them before they arrived in England in the 1870s. In England the men were in building work and the women in the woollen mills. On my mums side one line was generation after generation of railway men

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    1. Wow - first of all, I'm amazed that you can trace your family back that far. I have a family tree from Ancestry.com, but once I get back beyond the folks that my parents and grandparents actually knew, I have no idea what sort of professions they were engaged in.

      You're giving my theory some weight though. I think that Europe and the UK were so thoroughly settled by the 19th century that there just wasn't the available land for the sorts of homesteads that were so prevalent here in the US.

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    2. I think you are right about that- the land here has been owned for hundreds (maybe a thousand!) years, so there hasn't really been the opportunity to claim land and start a farm in recent history.

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    3. I guess I never really thought about it before, but maybe that's part of the whole "America, land of opportunity" thing - people came here because it was the only way they could own land.

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  12. actually, most of our farmers are the modern ones. My aunt and uncle just bought a 5 acre farmette and my uncle quit his job to start farming full time. My sister-in-law is an urban farmer in St. Louis Missouri (http://wildgourdfarm.wordpress.com/) and makes her living off her plots of land and some work at an urban harvest grocery store. Me, I'm just trying to make the occasional salad out of my 10th-floor patio container garden.

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    1. Ha! Now there's a new twist on the subject. Perhaps our society is starting to come full circle on the topic of farming. I love the word "farmett" BTW!

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  13. My great grandparents on my father's side were farmers. They grew cranberries on bogs in Massachusetts, and we'd spend vacations there in the summers when I was a kid.

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    1. OK... I'm totally laughing because for some reason my dyslexic brain read that as they were growing cabbages in bogs... and I'm thinking "Really? You can grow cabbage in bogs?" Anyhow, my mom lived in Massachusetts for a while and there were cranberry bogs everywhere. Sooooo pretty!

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  14. I am from Canada. My paternal grandparents were farmers. I learned about canning from my grandmother and a little bit from my mother. My maternal great-grandparents were farmers. I will be interested to see the results of your little survey.

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    1. OK... yet ANOTHER Canadian with farming roots. Y'all are totally changing my perception of our neighbors to the north.

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  15. Interesting thread you have going here, Cat. I know next to nothing on my father's side of the family. My mother's side is a bit different. I don't know how far back I would have to go to find farmers on my maternal grandmother's side. With my maternal grandfather he was first generation born here from Germany. His mother's father was a builder who built many of the homes in my birth city who left his properties to his two daughters. Yet, even with money (until the depression) she raised a garden. They lived in town with a smallish yard, yet she supported her family of 9 with the food she grew there. My grandfather shared stories of their chickens, the grape arbors and how even the boys (he only had 2 sisters) helped to preserve the foods to get the family through winter. She even grew enough from that back yard to trade with farmers for meat and dairy she couldn't raise herself. Does that qualify as farming? If we are talking extended family (and by marriage) my great uncle's daughter married a farmer's son. :-) That family is still working the farm, having been handed down a few generations now.

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    1. I seem to remember reading something about one of your relatives who was incredibly beneficent with those homes that your family built.

      But you bring up an interesting point... I'm starting to get the idea that there's a very fine line between "farmer" and "gardener". Very interesting. It's sorta changing the way I look at things in an oddly hopeful manner.

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    2. Yes, you are correct. I still don't know if I would have taken such a risk with a family of my own.

      I'm not sure where the line is between gardener and farmer. Each year I increase the size and variety in my garden but I would never consider myself a farmer. I picture farmers as up at the crack of dawn and having animals to care for.

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    3. It is an interestingly fuzzy line - especially since so many people are now raising backyard chickens.

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  16. On my father's side we have a fishmonger, a trader in fowl, a diamondcutter, a "jager" on a "trekschuit" (there is a page in English on Wikipedia explaining this typically Dutch phenomenon :-) ), a bookkeeper, a teacher. On my mother's side I have very little information except for my grandfather who worked in a factory, and my great-great-great-grandfather who was a sailor from Sweden. So not a farmer in sight!

    Rolien

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    1. OK, wait... is "fishmonger" a real profession? That word totally cracks me up... I'm picturing someone hording fish or something like that.

      Anyhow, I'm assuming from your comment that you're from Europe, and you're giving my theory more weight - that Europeans have to go much further back to find a farmer than does the typical American or Canadian.

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    2. A fishmonger is a seller of fish- like the fish equivalent of a butcher!

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    3. Very interesting. The only context in which I've heard "monger" used is the word hatemonger - who, I suppose is a seller of hate! :-)

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    4. When I retire, I want to tutor junior high students in math. I could call myself a mathmonger!

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    5. Wait... seriously? You actually enjoy math?!? So you're the one!

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    6. I don't actually enjoy math like many of my friends do--being fascinated with other bases and logarithms and whatnot. But I'm totally not afraid of it and think it's a good tool. You know, like cooking.

      Hmm, cookery-mongery: what happens on cooking shows.

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    7. Well, CatMan says that I just had lousy teachers, but the way math was taught to me it was anything BUT useful. It was just an endless series of trying to memorize the patterns of different formulas so I'd know how to solve them for the test. But I certainly never got the "big picture" if there was one.

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    8. Ugh. Yes, many math teachers are pretty terrible. Especially in elementary school where even the smart ones are there more because they like kids than because they like all the subjects.

      All I really use is addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of regular numbers, positive and negative numbers, fractions, and decimals, plus some geometry if I'm doing carpentry, quilting, or even just estimating paint. (And I love that we don't use Roman numerals and that we understand about zeroes.)

      About once a year I find an excuse to use algebra and I get very excited and make a whole blog entry out of it. Once in my life I found an excuse to use calculus.

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    9. Well, CatMan LOVES math - and I guess it's a good thing because he does complicated scientific computer programming so he uses it every day. But every once in a while he gets all excited about something and wants to start telling me about least squares or some other obscure math topic. I try to understand it, but holy moly! I fear once it gets past the point where I can visualize it I'm sunk.

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  17. My dad grew up on a farm, and I think my maternal grandmother did, too. My maternal grandfather's family seem to have been city people for many generations.

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    1. And my dad is from Wisconsin, my mother from Germany

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    2. Hmmmm... you're adding weight to my theory here - though I must admit, farming isn't the first thing that springs to mind when I think of Wisconsin. I think of beer and logging... and cheese curds - so I guess there must be dairy farms? Oh... the mental images I carry around are quite hysterical when I stop to think about them.

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  18. I know it's more than two generations for me - my grandpas were a doctor and a mechanic, but before that I have no idea!

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    1. Interesting... does Australia have a big agricultural heritage? I sorta think of crocodiles and scorching heat when I think of the world "down under" though I know that's a gross caricature.

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  19. Hey EcoCatLady - such a great question! But did you know that's not an easy question to answer? My paternal grandfather was born in 1898 - yep you read that right. He got a BA in Engineering and a MS of Divinity, which was a pretty big deal here in the south in the early 1900's. I suspect he was trying to get off the farm, as I believe his father (my paternal great-grandfather) was a farmer.

    On my mother's side, my grandmother (born in the early 1900's) always kept a big garden and a few chickens. It wasn't really considered farming as much as just plain survival. She had a regular job in the local textile mill (again, a very southern thing to do), which she considered a good job and lucky to have. But she still kept a garden.

    And no, I'm not 80 years old! :-) I just throw in the dates because I'm wondering if the 20th century thing to do was NOT farm, at least in my family.

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    1. Ha! I think you may be onto something... my grandparents were all born in the early 1900's and all wanted to go to the big city and make something of themselves. I think that's pretty typical of that generation. I'm thinking of pictures of my grandmothers as flappers, and my grandfathers with their slicked back hair. I think being "sophisticated" was pretty important to them.

      So perhaps the family farm was largely a 19th century American phenomenon, and I'm starting to think that my picture of it bears much more resemblance to Norman Rockwell than it does to reality!

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  20. I'm not far off the farm at all. My dad grew up on a farm in Ohio, and his dad still farms the same land. Both of my grandparents on that side come from farming families in Kentucky many generations back. I also have a cousin on that side who farms. On my mom's side, I have many second cousins who farm up in Quebec.

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    1. Wow! I think you may be winning the prize for the most farmers in your family. And yet another example of the farming Canadians. I am seriously having to adjust my mental image of Canada!

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  21. 2 generations. My mother's mother grew up on a farm but of her sibling group only 1, her youngest sister, stayed a farmer/married a farmer (cattle and corn). Location is mid-Altantic.

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    1. OK... adding yet more weight to my theory that many of we Americans are descendants of farmers.

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  22. Very interesting thread; I have very much enjoyed reading these histories.

    I have spent 10+ years tracking my Dad's family, and have traced them back 6 generations to my Gx6Gpa who was a FARMER :) in Killead, Antrim Co., North Ireland. He was born circa 1740. His son, my Gx5Gpa, immigrated to the US in 1805ish and farmed in New York. He passed away in the early 1840's, and his wife and all but one adult child (he stayed with the family farm in NY) removed to WI after his death. The boys and my Gx4Aunt purchased 40 acres of land each, with cash - when WI was still a territory in 1844. I guess it was highly unusual for a woman to purchase land in those days; the county historian was totally in awe of that when these records were pulled. In answer to the farming in WI question....my Gx5Gpa is listed in a Langlade Co., WI history book as being one of the first potato farmers in WI :) Farming continued on my paternal side through to my Gpa (1906-1986), who was raised on a farm, but did not farm as an adult. My dad, now retired, was career USAF & then a professor, and none of his siblings farmed, so that's where the farming stopped in his line.

    My husband's grandparents were Russian-German, and were what he calls "subsistence farmers" in Kansas. They had what he calls an enormous garden, and raised chickens (which his Gpa with a very thick accent called "shickens" :) ). He said they had a gas powered lawn mower to keep the weeds down, but all the gardening/farming tools were manual. My husband, who is 47, lived with his Grandparents for 2 years back in 1977ish, and he said they next to never bought food from a store. They lived off of what they grew, and "put up" (canned) the rest to get through winter. They did buy milk and bread, and I find it interesting that as frugal as they were, his Gma did not bake bread. I guess she bought it with her "egg money" & social security check. His Gpa worked for Henry Ford in Detroit in his early 20's, prior to becoming a farmer, so they had a Model T parked outside - but his Grandpa did not keep up his license, so they walked everywhere. They also did not have indoor plumbing (!) They lived until their 90's, and his Gma cooked on her woodstove and his Gpa hauled water into the house by bucket every morning until his dying day. Can you even IMAGINE??!! This was in the late 1970s!

    I am 44, and maybe it's my generation (X), but I can say without a doubt that this knowledge of my family (and my husbands) has greatly shaped my outlook on food sources. We have bought into a local CSA for the past few summers, and when our income allows, I do buy local beef and Hutterite chickens. I've recently found a local source for eggs, so I'm buying those locally now too. Until I learned this history of our family, farmers were other people to me.....and now that I know they are who I came from, it has definitely changed me. I am all about supporting local farmers/growers.

    Thank you for the fascinating topic!

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    1. Wow! That's fabulous that you've been able to trace your family history back so far. It really is fascinating isn't it? I'm trying to picture this guy hauling water in the 1970's - that's just totally amazing.

      The family history of my mothers mother - the one who was raised as a Mormon, has been extensively researched - it's part of their religion. So when I get on Ancestry I can literally take each thread back hundreds and hundreds of years. At one point I decided to just follow one back as far as I could go - can't remember if I followed a paternal or maternal line, but I ended up around the year 800 with King Olav of Sweden!

      And the really eerie part was that Olav's daughter (the one I'm descended from) married some dude in Norway and ruled in Trondheim - which is the city I lived in when I was an exchange student there. When I lived there people always asked me if my family was Norwegian and I always said no - but come to find out I am descended from Norwegian royalty! I actually think that a huge percentage of white people can trace their roots back to European royalty of some sort if they just go back far enough, but it's fun nevertheless.

      CatMan's family is fascinating as well. He has ancestors who came over on the Mayflower, and I traced one line back to king Charlemagne.

      Anyhow, I totally LOVE how learning about your family history inspired you to look at farming differently. I think one thing that researching family history has taught me is that we're all sooo much more connected than we realize.

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  23. Not sure how I fit in here. I'm not a great researchers of family trees, but I know of no farmers on either my father's side of the family (musicians, in one sense or another) nor my mother's (Protestant ministers, mostly). I spent most of my working life as a dairy herd manager, so though I'm retired now, and have done lots of other things (music, writing, IT) over the years, I still tend to identify with the land, and with the people who live work there.

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    1. Gosh... I'm not sure how to count you either! In a sense you'd be considered a farmer yourself, so you'd be zero generations removed... but that wasn't really the question. Hmm.... the plot thickens!

      I am fascinated to hear of your family history of musicians though. Did folks in your family actually make their living from music? That's quite difficult to do even these days, so I'd love to hear how they managed it in the past. :-)

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  24. Late to the game here, but wanted to chime in anyway. I come from a small town in a rural area. My grandparents were born in the early part of the 1900's. During their childhoods, and in the generations before them, almost everybody in the area farmed. If it wasn't a full time job, you at least raised your own large garden. I was born in the 70's and my family farmed while holding down full time jobs as well. We had a large garden and my grandparents next door had a bigger one. My grandparents also raised a few pigs each year for slaughter. My dad had a separate piece of land (66acres) where he planted soybeans or corn to sell.

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    1. Wow! So you're not far off the farm at all. I think you're adding more weight to my thesis here... :-)

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