19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, June 16, 1914: Am as stiff as a poker, and feel worse than I don’t know what.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I’d feel stiff, too. I think that Grandma was getting paid by a neighbor to pick strawberries. The previous day she wrote that she was “working for wages.” It’s hard work to stoop and pick strawberries for hours on end.
I wonder if Grandma ate any of the berries. In 1912, she wrote:
This morning I picked berries and helped myself to some. I wonder if anyone saw me. . .
A Hundred Years Ago 
I hope she did get some to taste.
So do I. 🙂
Yes, I certainly hope she got a taste!
Eating fresh strawberries in the field is the best part of picking them. 🙂
There’s something we can all identify with, even a hundred years later – doing something your body isn’t used to, for hours on end HURTS….
But fresh strawberries and a bit of spending money make it (some) better 🙂
Getting paid for her efforts hopefully made the stiffness and pain more bearable.
All this talk about strawberries make me wonder when the local ones will be ready . . .
It seems like you should have local ones very soon.
I can’t imagine how sore I would be!
Picking strawberries had to have been very hot and tiring work.
Poor Helena!
I agree. . .but at least she got paid. 🙂
My back hurts just thinking about the hours spent picking. Not easy work I recall from my own years growing up on a farm.
There’s lots of hard work that needs to be done on farms. 🙂
I bet she felt stiff, that’s hard work!
Diana xo
I agree–it’s very tiring to pick strawberries.
Yes, that is hard work! We went blueberry picking the other day. At least you can stand up straight for that!
Wow, I’m amazed that you have blueberries already. I don’t think that we’ll have local ones for another month or so.
I did that too when I was about 17-18…and yes, you get stiff pretty quickly 🙂
It’s hard work. 🙂
I hope your grandma made lots of “wages” to cover her photography equipment and that she also enjoyed some of those strawberries herself!
It’s nice that she apparently had enough money to be able to pursue a hobby like photography.
I worked bent over all day yesterday and sure felt it today. Not to mention you grandma was probably dresses less comfortable than me.
I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to pick strawberries while wearing a dress.
Our local ones are starting too – funny how the events of a decade ago repeats itself…well all except the hours of picking!
There definitely is a seasonal ebb and flow of agriculture that repeats itself year after year.
I do not like picking strawberries – hard work and too hot. 🙂
I agree!. . though it can be almost fun to pick a few strawberries with family or friends at a U-pick place.
Yes a few can be fun to pick. 🙂