Thurwood Thursday

Charles Thurwood was a farmer up around Fort Plain, NY. In 1874 he was of an age with Alan, who is 21, and working with his folks pretty much like Alan does today, except there were no tractors. He kept a diary, something like this diary, of what he and his family did each day and how their lives were back in that other century.

Every now and then I take a look back at that diary and think about our parallels.

And there are many.

Yesterday's entry:

"Cloudy and windy and cold and we picked apples and father went over to Mr. Bujer and bought a horse for $110 dollars. Eleven years old and in the afternoon father went to Fort Plain."

And yesterday here in modern NY, just a handful of miles east of Fort Plain, Alan might have written: "Cloudy but pleasant, not much breeze, and I chopped alfalfa and put it in the ag bag and father worked on the driveway and mother saw a mangy red fox in the house yard. No wonder the chickens were raising Cain all morning."

There is quite an almanac in the front of Charles' little leather-bound book. The states and territories of the time are listed there. No Colorado or Idaho on that list. NY State had a population of 4,380,759 back then. I have no idea how accurate those figures are, but I think we have a few more folks living here now.

Pretty soon it will be time to pick the Winesap apples for jelly too, but we sure won't be buy a horse any time soon, no matter what the price or age.

The Thurwood Diary

Every now and then I open Charles Thurwood's 1874 pocket diary and compare his notations of what went on on his family's Fort Plain farm to what is happening on our farm in the here and now. Charles was a young man in 1874, voted for the first time that year. He and his family worked hard at farming, gardening and building around their place, but spent most evenings visiting neighbors and having fun.

"Windy but pleasant and i and til went to Mart Brookmans auction and we stade all day and our father boilt maple sugar 8 pounds got 3 pales of sap and 32 eggs"

Here at Northview, the sap run is about over, but the rest of the crew (excluding Beck and me) are going to Jim McFadden's auction on Saturday. It is windy, but pleasant this morning. The danged hens refuse to start laying...little do they know that if they don't get busy soon they are getting kicked out of the nifty new hen house to be replaced by some pullets, which I will find somewhere. There is no economy in raising your own eggs, but they sure taste good...darn it!

I bought Charles' diary way back when the boss and I were dating as a Christmas gift for him. It came from my dad and mom's bookshop, Tryon County Books. Mom is working hard at making an online catalog...if you are interested in history, hunting, fishing, shooting or any other antiquarian books, take a look. (I had the good fortune to grow up in a bookstore, reading Tarzan, the Hardy Boys and non-fiction animal science books well above my years....it changed my life in many ways)

More Thurwood

January 8, 1874

Foggy and warm and it rained a little and I went up to Dunckels and in the afternoon it rained and got windy and cold and that is all.
3 eggs for today

Here in 2008 at Northview Farm the weather fellas are also predicting a warm day. I am predicting more grey hair, as I take Becky out driving every day, praying as we go. She needs her driver's license. I need a tranquilizer.


When that is done there is the work on the Census of Agriculture, which we are required to fill out. It is where all those NASS numbers come from but it is HARD (warning pdf file) and it makes me whiny. It says that it takes fifty minutes per response. I don't know if that means per question...there are pages and pages, per page, yep, a lot of them, or for the whole questionnaire. All I know it that I worked on it all afternoon yesterday and it isn't done yet. Wish the government didn't expect us to do their bookkeeping for them.

We also got news that our USPH inspection is coming up, which requires that we offer for consideration a barn that is somewhere near as clean as the set of ER. (Check that link out and imagine complying in a 200 year old barn full of unhousebroken animals, and run by men of the "drop it where you use it" school of tool care. Thank God for Liz is all I gotta say.) We knew that was in the offing and have been working on it, but it is no fun at all.

And then there is the Top Scan thing from Homeland Security. Farm Bureau has been frantically working to get farms exempted from having to fill one out (we have fertilizer and propane and such on hand and may be terrorists or terrorist targets). Even with the information they are sending me in almost daily emails, I have no clue whether we have to fill one out or not. Or how.This sort of snuck in under my farm politics and regulation radar (I get perhaps fifty or sixty emails and newsletters a week on farm policy, agricultural news and commentary and visit many sites that compile such data. Never heard of this one until last week. Since the deadline for compliance, once you figure out whether you have to comply is January 22 that is cutting it pretty close.)

Tax time looms. (Numberwise I need you....He-e-e-e-el-l-pppppp!!!!!) The books must be put in order. New files set up for 2008. All my mistakes of 2007 found and fixed. Arggghhhh!!!

I envy Charlie. I don't exactly want to live without electricity. I would miss my computer. However, I already take care of farm animals every day and I already have to keep warm with wood and hard work. We already grow a lot of our own food, and I do know how to live without modern conveniences having once resided in an itty bitty cabin in the woods, minus most of them.
I would love to forgo all the above government intrusion into our lives and business in trade for the ability to just do the work....you know, feed the cows, milk the cows, grow the food. I'll bet nobody told Charlie how tight his milkhouse door had to be or how to turn his calf buckets upside down.