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 
Hard work that’s for sure……It’s great you have photos of him working in the fields.
Pam
& from what I’ve heard, that’s some of the most intense labor that can be done … Amazing pictures here – how old was he when these were taken ?
People worked hard back then. It reminds me a little of my mother’s parents. They had a house with about three acres of land. The property was not very wide, but it was deep. My grandfather built the house a little at a time. Every part of the house was essentially an addition. He also built a shed behind the house. In my lifetime, the shed doubled in size so it was almost as big as a house. He kept animals like geese, sheep, and quails. Behind the animals was his garden where he grew all kinds of vegetables. My grandmother would can food and store it under the house in a crawlspace.
Wonderful pictures and memories.
Love this. They were definitely a hard working family and seemed so close they’re whole lives.
First work I ever did was to ‘drive’ the tractor for Dad to get the wooden stakes up after the peanuts had been picked. What a different experience. Thanks for sharing the pictures that brought back neat memories. Yes, farming has changed so much and harvesting is easier