16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, July 21, 1911: I was out in the field with my Daddy helping him with his everlasting work!
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I love this entry–and as someone who grew up on a farm, I can relate to Grandma’s feelings regarding everlasting work.
The small grains are harvested in July. So Grandma probably was helping her father with some task related to the harvesting of wheat or oats. The grain would have been cut, and then put into sheaves for additional drying. At a later date, neighbors would help each other thresh the grain (separate the grain from the straw).
Very nice. I like seeing the whole ad, as well. Looked quite familiar to an old Iowa farm boy! It would have been oats, in our area. Thanks, again, for sharing. 😉
I checked with my father and he says that as far back as he can remember farmers planted both winter wheat and oats in central Pennsylvania. He remembers that years ago farmers generally used a 4-crop rotation–oats, winter wheat, clover or other hay crop, and corn. (Of course he is remembering a time period after the diary–so it may have been somewhat different a hundred years ago.)