Yesterday, I traveled about an hour down some country roads to have lunch with a friend and visit a relative.
It was a nice day, and as I drove, I noticed all the harvesting taking place in the many fields along the way. Right now in our area, soy beans are being picked, and peanuts are being dug. The peanuts will be allowed to remain on the ground for a while to dry before they’re actually ‘picked’ off the vines.
As I saw all this work taking place, I couldn’t help but think of my paternal grandfather, Ben Ellis. I never knew him: he passed away two years before I was born. If you’re friends or family or a follower of this blog, you know that he and my grandmother raised twelve children. He was a farmer, a hard worker and provided for his big family during hard times.
They lived at historic Bacon’s Castle for about twenty years, from the early 1920’s until the early 1940’s. The house was owned by a cousin of my grandmother’s, and Granddaddy was basically a sharecropper. Among our old family photos are these two of him in a peanut field there at the Castle. Rarely do you see peanuts being ‘shocked’ these days.
I think of all the modern machinery that makes farm work easier and able to be done more efficiently, and then look back on these photos….
…and know that all this work was done with mules or horses and lots of manual labor by Granddaddy, his six sons, and many times, some of his six daughters.
I never knew you, Granddaddy, but I sure thought about you during my drive yesterday.
~These Days Of Mine~
these days of mine 