Chapter 1: Setting the scene
I don't have blonde hair but this might as well be me
I grew up semi off grid, until about the age of 8, in a rural subdivision of Greene county, in Southwestern Missouri; a county that lived up to it's name. In the area where I lived, it was mostly peppered with farms, except the part of the street from our house leading up to the main Highway. On our stretch of the street we were lucky to have had our road paved, one lane each direction. Traffic was very light even though this was a main street connecting two highways together. Our postal address was a P.O. Box. It was nearly an acre walk round trip just to get the mail. Our closest neighbor was about an acre away. Gordon and Diane, who were parents to Janey (my childhood best friend) and Becky. They were also on a small homestead, living in a beat up old one story house that continued decaying over the years. It had peeling dull olive green paint that was probably lead laden. They raised goats in the open field catty corner from our place. Money was always tight around these parts. Things like repairing the house went neglected. Looking back on it as an adult perspective, the homesteading life was certainly not easy. As a child I new nothing different. It was normal. It was natural. As far as I was concerned, then and now, growing up in this environment. It was paradise. It was peaceful. It was home. It will always be home.
Examples of the types of properties around our area
A good number of residents owned acreage which they farmed, or was once farmed by earlier generations of their families. I only remember a few of the houses on my street owning less than 10 acres. The farms on our street were mostly livestock, although I also remember a pumpkin farmer not too far away. Cows and goats chattering all day about who knows what. They were dairy goats and cows who got to roam freely in the open pastures, being rotated to different paddocks as needed. The cows were mostly pleasant. Every now and then one would escape to come trotting down the road or into our property. They were never aggressive, although mom has a pretty funny story from when she was a child about a bull. Some days I would hang out near the front of the property playing, listening and watching the cows. However, I will never forget the stench of cow manure on a hot day. Not one of the fondest memories of living the country, to be sure, although I have smelled much worse living closer to civilization when driving past feed lots, landfills, and sewage treatment plants.
These are close to the types of cows our neighbors had, although theirs were black
In our rural community, farmers markets did not exist. Why would they when everyone could just grow it themselves? Why would they when neighbors would share some of their squash in exchange for someone else's potatoes, and visa versa? People at Sunday Church would bring bags of persimmons for anyone who was interested. Every now and then you might have seen a truck parked beside the road selling watermelons and cantaloupe, but that was infrequent. In our neck of the woods, farmers mostly bartered or shared with neighbors, then sold their crops to regionally dominant companies with large food processing plants. That's not to say that buying a couple head of cattle was unheard of, though. Anyone can grow plants. Not everyone can breed animals. Anyway, This was when neighbors were, neighborly. They waved at you when you passed them on the street. If you were stranded on the side of the road, passerby's would stop to give you a jump, or a lift to a pay phone, regardless if they knew you or not. We knew nearly everyone on our street by last name, for example, "Did you hear that the Johnson's eldest is getting married in May"? We all went to the same schools, the same churchs, the same gas stations and grocery stores. It was such a small community. The kind of community movies are made of. Outnumbered by plants and animals, humans were the minority. Boy, did it feel great!
It was common to see old tractors plowing and brush hogging fields. Oh the nostalgia!
In the winter, after all the grass went dormant, turned brown, and the trees went bare, the landscape scenery was never boring. Especially after a substantial snow storm. I remember how it always felt magical watching the snow fall on the trees. It was just like one of those glittery winter greeting cards that say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays", minus the multicolored strings of lights. I miss looking out my back window to see the pine tree branches covered in glistening snow. Bundled up to go exploring outside, I would track footprints of the bucks and does dotting the otherwise undisturbed snow covered ground. If more than 6 inches of snow fell, out would come the ice-cream machine to make snow Ice-cream. It was more like Vanilla snow slushy by the time we would eat it but it was divine! One year in particular there was a huge ice storm which left foot long 1 inch diameter icicles hanging from the gutters. All the tree branches were thickly coated with ice. Some of the branches broke, falling to ground from the weight of the ice. There were icicles dangling from the cars like large sharp pointy teeth of a weather monster. What a magical time it was living there in the stillness. "In the country", as my family still refers to this house, was home. It will always be home.
It was a magical place all times of the year. Especially in winter with the untouched land
I say we were semi off grid because although we used electricity, we used propane for cooking/heating, had a septic system, were on well water and as a nice bonus had a small seasonal spring within the oak and elm tree forest separating our property from Virgie's. She was my great grandmother. A good portion of the property was a naturally wild crafted food forest. I roamed around there, BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES, as if I owned the entire place. The concept of being bored rarely even entered into my thoughts as a child living there in "the country". In the warm months I was outside from just after breakfast until dusk, when the monsters in the night came alive. On my excursions I would often pick perfectly ripe fruit, eating it right then and there! Wild nut trees, fruit trees, berry bushes, and acres of foraging foods were everywhere, not to mention the vast assortment of bugs and critters. The older I get, the more I want to recreate this period of time, that childhood entrance into my life. We are at a place now which has many of the same characteristics as "the country". I am very thankful for that. This is home, too.
Pretty close to the seasonal stream we had during the rainy season except we had fewer rocks
Growing up Cable TV was not a thing in our house. Occasionally we would watch shows such as Reading Rainbow, Days of Our Lives, the News, Johnny Carson etc, that would come over the airwaves to our small black and white television, finely tuned through foil wrapped analogue antenna, also known as bunny ears. It was the duty of one of us impatient kids to get up and adjust the bunny ears until the signal came in clear. Ah, the good old days of analogue! Neither did we use air conditioning or a clothes dryer in our house; expensive unnecessary energy eaters. It sure would have been nice to use those back then, but life was normal living without them. The trees beside our house were large mature Maples and Oaks which provided good shade to help keep the house cool. Box fans sucking the air in through the front door with box fans pushing the air out through the back door was the standard operating procedure to cool the house. During the winter I always remember being toasty warm. Almost too warm sometimes. I guess when I was baby we had a cast iron wood fired stove but I don't remember it. When my mom was growing up there, she says they still used an outhouse. At one time in her childhood there was also a large barn for their free range dairy cattle, a pigpen, chicken coup, a butcher tree, a large garden, and a stocked pond. A pretty standard homestead for the midwest during the 50's through 80's.
The good old reliable analogue black and white tv with bunny ears. I see no foil, though
When it came time for laundry, outside it went to be hung up on the parallel wire clothing lines connected between two steel T posts. When my mother was a kid, my grandmother used to freeze her clothes, then iron them before she went to wear them. My grandmother was born sometime around World War 1. By the time the great depression came around, she was a married young wife to, if I remember right, her childhood sweetheart. I imagine she must have learned some amazing means of survival, this ironing frozen clothes trick being one of them. Most of the time I am not overly bothered by the fact that I never got to meet her, or to learn first hand stories from her, but sometimes I am sad about it. She passed away due to Metastatic Stomach Carcinoma when my mother was a teenager. She, and my grandfather Oscar, put sweat equity and soul into that homestead in "the country". When my grandmother became sick the farm was deserted, temporarily left by the wayside, as Oscar moved the family into Kansas City while she got medical treatment. Such is life, full of good fortune and tragedy. Her name was Gladys.
I don't remember having a tractor as a kid, and the backdrop behind our cloths line was a Cedar and Pine forrest
(ALL IMAGES SOURCED FROM PIXABAY)
TO BE CONTINUED...
That's all for now. Until the next post... If you found this post enjoyable, please consider upvoting, resteeming, following, and commenting! Thank you kindly for reading. To read previous posts regarding these stories and my posting plan here is the first one:
Barefoot in the Boonies: Exposing My Roots (Introduction)
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