ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

I have enjoyed reading the postings and viewpoints thus far on this article. I spent my child years during the 60's and I can relate to many of the comments about working hard in the fruit orchards and vegetable gardens. I have even written stories which I have named, "Lessons From the Strawberry Patch". I often worked side by side picking berries, apples, veges and other edibles that my grandparents would sell. At times I was frustrated with the idea of "working" for my grandparents and doing so much with them and for them. After I got older and had a family of my own, I realized that I had been given the greatest gift a child could ask for, experience and knowledge from "Lessons From the Strawberry Patch". For example, some of my neighbors can't tell the difference between weeds and plants they would like to keep. As soon as a seedling is about 1 inch high, I can tell what it is on sight. I knew when and how to trim the fruit trees. I knew when and where to transplant strawberry plants. I can tell the different types of fruit trees before they grow fruit. Some of my neighbors have asked if I have taken Master Gardening classes because of the knowledge I have of plants and growing things. I have told them that I learned the lessons from my grandparents in the strawberry patch. It was not only about plants that I learned, it was also how to treat others. Once, I remember watching the way my grandfather placed the apples in a basket that he was selling. I told him that I had learned a "marketing technique" from one of my friend's dads who also sold fruit. He would put the largest and most beautiful apples on the top of the stack and the wormy, small ones at the bottom. I recommended this idea to my grandfather and he taught me a lesson in one sentence about integrity. He told me that his conscience wouldn't let him trick anyone and he always slept better at night when he offered everyone his best, no matter what. The lessons a child learns while working and playing side by side with an adult are priceless. Yes, the world is changing and my grand child thrives with the time she spends with us. We make sure that she has time without interruption from radio, television and noise. We play with her, talk to her, sit on the ground and watch the ants with her. I watch how my own adult children treat little children and it becomes even more apparent that the "Lessons From the Strawberry Patch" continues on. Children will always be full of wonder and amazement, let us take that gift and proliferate it for future generations, if not in the strawberry patch, then, in other activities that come our way with our changing society. All is not lost or forgotten.

I too grew up in a small town (250) in Maine with little "stuff" but so much to play with and learn from. I sat under a big spruce tree, branches touching the ground, and read my fanorite books or wrote stories or just dreamed; I played in the woods with the neighbor kids, building forts and castles and creating dramas; I was allowed to row our little boat upstream, all by myself, as long as I wore my life preserver and loved floating along with the current under the canopy of branches near the river bank; I tromped the woods with my father, finding Christmas trees, catching brook trout, learning to find my way out if I ever got lost; I baked cookies with my mother and helped with the laundry; I built go carts with my friends from old fallen down sheds and wheels from discarded lawn mowers; I learned to plant fish under corn , sprinkle tomato plants with granite dust to stop cut worms (Daddy was a stone cutter), how to pick the plant whose juice would stop the itch of mosquito bites; I picked wild strawberries that we made into shortcake and I made "corsages" for my mother from wildflowers. I grew up poor, but I didn't know it, and I wouldn't change that free, creative childhood for anything. As a center director I strive to bring a little of those kinds of creative experiences to "my" children, since there is precious little time for their working parents to do it. My staff spends a lot of time outside exploring with the children, catching bugs and watching clouds. I think we all need to make these kinds of experiences a priority for the children in our care.

The 5/4/07 response from Edna Ranck brought back many memories of my own childhood on a remote farm/ranch in northwest Oklahoma. We were poor in money but rich in intangibles that I didn't recognize until much later.

We had no running water, although we had a hand pump in the kitchen. Baths were taken in a galvanized tub brought in from the back porch, we heated the bath water on the kitchen stove, and the whole family bathed in the same water. We used an outdoor privy, which was cold in the winter and hot and smelly in the summer. We used chamber pots for indoor use at night, and one of my chores as a child was to empty the pots each morning. My dad smoked a pipe,and winter or summer he enjoyed a long "constitutional" in the outhouse. My brother and I fondly remember the blue smoke from our father's pipe rolling out of the top of the outhouse while he was in there. I remember those happy occasions in the winter when I could follow my father's time in the outhouse, because he had warmed the seat. Otherwise, I sometimes had to brush snow off the seat before sitting down to do my business.

This was in the 1950's and farming was not so mechanized as it has become today. We milked cows, raised chickens for feed and eggs, raised pigs, grew a big vegetable garden, and managed a herd of beef cows. My brother and I were important sources of labor that our parents certainly took advantage of, but looking back I don't see any evidence that we were asked to do chores beyond our ability, and we had ample time to play. I had to help milk cows (one of my daily chores from about the age of 7 on was to ride my horse and bring in the milk cows during the 6 months of the year when grass was growing and the lure of grain in the milk barn wasn't enough of a temptation to bring them in on their own). I also hoed weeds in the vegetable garden, picked vegetables, helped my mother with the canning of them, gathered the eggs, ran the milk through a cream separator, slopped the hogs, and on and on.

Dressing chickens was probably the most distasteful task. We usually ordered 100 baby chicks that arrived in the mail. The post office (30 miles away) sent word with the rural mail carrier that our chicks were in, and we made a special trip to town to pick up a cardboard box full of baby chicks. Surprisingly, most survived the shipping experience. When the chicks got old enouth to determine sex (we ordered "straight run" chicks, cheaper but random as far as sex was concerned), we began dressing the roosters and putting them in the freezer. This involved catching a half dozen or so unlucky roosters, heating a big pot of water, and when the water was ready Mom rung each chicken's neck and popped the head off. When they quit flopping around, she doused them in water just hot enough to loosen the feathers but not so hot as to cause the skin to break when plucked. Then she handed them off to my brother and I for plucking. I still remember the smell of wet chicken feathers!

Still, I had lots of time to roam the creek and woods near the house playing cowboys and Indians, hunting rabbits and squirrels, fishing, etc. One of the unique opportunities I had that seems impossible today was the chance to sit down with both parents for three meals a day. Except for lunches at school during the school year, I ate nearly every meal with both parents. Now it's a challenge to have even one meal a day with my wife and children.

My wife and I try to give our children the sense that they are essential members of the family by assigning them chores and assuring they follow through, but it's an artificial exercise. When I was a child I was directly involved in the livelihood of my family. Now, if my children don't empty the dishwasher or mop the kitchen floor we still have food on the table and a roof over our heads. We have more money and less time, and I think we are the poorer for it, especially the children.

I, too, grew up during WWII and was a child of barely post-depression days. I remember food stamps of the rationing type, of standing in line when the rumor spread that the Oneida store had BUTTER. My father grew a huge Victory Garden and we canned much of the produce, so I learned first hand about how seeds sprout,how to scoop potato bugs into cans of kerosene, how to prepare vegetables for canning- all by the time I reached my teen years. Leisure time was spent imagining while swimming in a fresh water stream (I would be rescuing shipwrencks, swimming the channel, etc. in my mind.) The air I breathed was free of smog- and there was no TV to take my time away from books. My imagination was not stimualted by the PR people of Disney- I manufactured my own. I worry about my grandchchildren who have grown up seeing images a normal mind could not even imagine on MTV and computer games. I don't want to go back to the days my mother lived, but I DO want to go back to a simpler, more holistic life!

I agree with a lot foo what Palmer has to say. I think as adults we need to make time for children. I am a very busy teacher, volunteer and mom and find myself out of the house a lot, however, the time I do spend with my child is valuable, quality time. We sit together, we talk and listen-so many adults don't have meaningful conversations with their children or the children in their care! I agree life is way different and more hardened and structured, and there are ways to get around that and help our children to realize that there is more to life than video games and computer chat rooms. I'm trying-it's hard, but I won't give up!