{"id":436,"date":"2011-08-24T22:32:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T05:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delightfilledart.wordpress.com\/?p=436"},"modified":"2016-01-27T13:04:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T21:04:06","slug":"summer-on-the-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/?p=436","title":{"rendered":"Summer on the farm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Old journals, letters, and artefacts from my family farm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This summer we vacationed at my childhood farm in Southwestern Ontario, along the shore of Lake Erie and nestled in by a hedge of field corn, overgrowth, humidity, and the intense, throbbing hum of cicadas and crickets.<\/p>\n

People are often quite surprised to discover that I am from a farm. My dad was born and lived his whole life on the same farm. In August, we convened with my parents and “far-flung” siblings, to quote my brother, and our 8 children under 7 years old. We spent lazy mornings playing in a pile of sand, splashing in the velvety lake sand, or playing with all our childhood toys and games. The delight of Lite-brite, Viewmaster, Little People, and Connect Four were not lost on the next generation.<\/p>\n

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Kids sitting on the foundation of the old barns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But at night, I quickly unearthed a box full of old letters from my grandfather’s sister to her parents during her year at Normal School, 1939-1940. As always, I became engrossed in the details between the lines. If I were to write a book set in that time period, I would have pages of details about the movies showing, the prices of gas, hotels, eggs, and flannel, and the kinds of things a rural girl cared about in those days. Being on the farm, outside the same sleepy hamlet where my ancestors’ farm days were lived out, I cannot help but be fascinated and feel a sense of connection with the past.<\/p>\n

I brought home more journals, ledgers, letters, and some other trinkets: a bone dice that has to have been handmade, some belt buckles, a brooch, some pocket mirrors, a metal toy pig, and a renewed interest in writing. Another notebook is filled with recipes for cleaners and home remedies.<\/p>\n

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A few of my souveniers from the farm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is it in me that finds this stuff so fascinating? Partly it’s the mystery – as a child, I spent hours exploring the barns and former site of “the old house,” hoping to find a secret room. It occurred to me that rather than reading 70-year-old letters, I should be asking my living relatives to share their own stories and memories.<\/p>\n

On my last day in Ontario, I rediscovered some of my Great Grandma’s journals, and my dad and I enjoyed going over them for details of his birth in 1945, and also the accident when he was 10, when he was hit by a car quite seriously. Dad’s sister eagerly shared a number of her memories of their childhood, which mean a lot to me since he doesn’t recall some of those things. I love hearing the stories of how the farm used to be in several phases over the past century and a half.<\/p>\n

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Great Grandmother’s 1945-49 journal open to the page about my Father’s birth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am home again now, shaking off the lazy mental state of vacation and time travel. I picked up the Elizabeth Hay book, “Alone in the Classroom,” and engaged by how similar parts of her story are to the kind of novel I was cooking up while reading my stash of old journals and letters – a similar time period, also about her aunt who was a teacher. It will probably be a few years before I can develop enough of a plot to write my own book, but it’s nice to be thinking about writing again.<\/p>\n

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This summer we vacationed at my childhood farm in Southwestern Ontario, along the shore of Lake Erie and nestled in by a hedge of field corn, overgrowth, humidity, and the intense, throbbing hum of cicadas and crickets. People are often … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,39,40],"tags":[98,320,381,473,557,580,593,649,686,706,837],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-2","category-travel","category-writing-2","tag-aritcles","tag-country-life","tag-elizabeth-hay","tag-geneology","tag-journals","tag-lake-erie","tag-letters","tag-morpeth","tag-normal-school","tag-ontario","tag-rural-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}