Frying Pan Farm — Background and Themes

Work began in early spring when a team of horses--later a tractor--pulled a steel plow across each field, turning up the earth into a rough and lumpy mass. Little was known of contour plowing or planting at this time, and the team was driven back and forth in straight rows. C. T. Rice and County Agricultural Extension Agent H. B. Derr both noted that erosion was a major problem in the area at the time.[19] The newly broken ground was then worked with a "drag," generally made of heavy logs chained together and topped with a platform on which the driver stood. The purpose of this implement was to use the weight of the "drag" to break up the soil clods. After this was finished, a field still needed to be worked once more before planting, this time with a harrow. The harrow resembled a large, spike-toothed rake, with two sections, each containing four rows of teeth. Passed over the field, it stirred up the ground and continued the pulverization of the soil to make a mellow, friable seed bed.[20]

These chores were exacting and time-consuming. Neal Bailey, who has spent many of his 66 years in working fields around Floris, estimated that a man and strong team could harrow or drag but a ten-acre field in about 6-1/2 hours. Plowing took even longer. "Most of the land was hard to plow and we had to start as soon as possible in the spring in order to get through before it got too hard and sometimes we didn't make it," wrote Wilson McNair. The majority of farmers could plow only an acre or acre and a half in a day's time.[21]

Fairfax County's soil (principally Chester loam, a clay soil with a slightly acidic base) was deep, fertile and, as Joseph Beard put it, "adapted to growing the kinds of things cows like to eat at a reasonable price."[22] Because it was somewhat acidic, the soil benefitted from the addition of lime and, of course, needed other fertilizers. Fertilization techniques had been known for hundreds of years (George Washington burned oyster shells to obtain lime for his fields), however, their benefits were not always fully understood. Most farmers spread manure and some guano on their cropland, but correct chemical balances for specific crops were achieved only infrequently. Often the small landowner did not have spare fields to lie fallow for a year--the ideal situation for soil enrichment. "We spread some lime a time or two, but not nearly enough," admitted Wilson McNair. "We got burned lump lime and dumped it on the ground in piles of one bushel and when it had slaked we spread it with a shovel." The spreading itself could be a problem, especially when the earliest trucks began to be used in the mid-1920s. A truck hauling seven or eight tons of lime would bog down in a wet field: "The only way you could get out was to dump the lime, and if you dumped the lime you were in the hole you got stuck in." Thus, a lack of understanding of soil building techniques was coupled with the physical difficulty of fertilization, to inhibit the optimum efficiency of the land in the early 20th century.[23]

With the soil prepared, the crops could be sown. In the fall, generally between mid-October and Thanksgiving, winter wheat was planted. A "drill" or mechanical planter drawn by horses was used, which could be adapted for use with oats, barley or rye. The area had once been a principal wheat-growing region, but in the early 20th century dairymen cultivated wheat chiefly for the straw which was used for bedding. In the mid-1930s, however, the availability of certified seed (seed which was grown to be of a uniform and established varietal type, much as genetically pure livestock was bred) raised the quality of Fairfax wheat and slightly increased the grain's marketability.[24] Edith Rogers, a long-time Floris resident and for many years a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, grew wheat on her family's farm to use in chicken feed, and to have milled into flour for home use. It was ground at the Herndon Milling Company.[25] Like the use of certified seed, increased understanding of fertilization and crop rotation practices boosted production of wheat per acre, yet it never gained prominence as even a secondary crop. In large part this was due to the fact that wheat was a less desirable ingredient in cattle feed than was corn or even soybeans.[26]

Corn was planted in the spring, generally in late April. Again a drill was employed, which, planting two rows at a time, enabled the farmer to plant about ten acres in one day. The wide variety of uses for corn made it Fairfax County's most important grain crop and a 1926 report on the area's agriculture observed that "nearly every farm has more or less corn."[27] Not only was the grain a chief ingredient in the dairy cattle's "concentrate" or feed mixture, but it was used to feed horses, chickens and to fatten pigs near butchering time. The leaves and stalks were ground for ensilage or stored in the shock for dry fodder. During the 1920s, County Agent Derr promoted a continual campaign to improve the area's corn production and even introduced a new variety, dubbed "Fairfax County White Corn," because of its local success. He also worked to increase yields of other popular strains, notably Reid's Yellow Dent. In a report on his work in this field in 1925, Derr shows his methods to be not far removed from the early genetic experimentation of Gregor Mendel.

For the past four years the writer has assisted one of his best demonstrators in improving his crop of Reid's Yellow Dent Corn. The first year the best 50 ears were planted in 50 separate rows and at harvest time the best yielding 10 rows were selected for the next year's work. This work was continued, each year the number of rows being reduced. This year the results show a very uniform type of corn....[28]

Soybeans began to be introduced into the area during this period and Fairfax County farmers also sowed various grasses for summer pasturage and to make hay for winter feeding. Timothy and clover predominated among pasture crops. Some farmers persisted in raising alfalfa, despite H. B. Derr's repeated protests that it was unprofitable on the county's lime-poor soil.[29] A few ambitious farmers even experimented with grasses attempting to find those which produced the highest milk yields and one went so far as to have a special ladino clover seed brought from Oregon because he felt it increased the richness of his milk.[30] As with wheat and corn, improved varietal types and stricter control over the uniformity of the seed greatly aided the cultivator.

Naturally, the farmer's work only began with the sowing of the seed, for activity continued throughout the year. The work of calving, of pruning orchard trees, digging garden beds, and trimming cattle hooves occurred in the spring. In early summer the corn was thinned from four to two stalks per hill, by using a sharp stick to dig the stalks out. Then, toward the end of June the winter wheat was harvested. Cut with a binder and tied in bundles, it was shocked (put in stacks of ten to twelve bundles, wigwam fashion, with a bundle on top to shed water, or stacked on poles in a mound with the outside sloping a bit to let the rain run off) and left to dry in the field. If threshed by hand after about a month it had to be gathered and taken to the barn for further drying.

In the 1920s, however, only a few farmers still wielded the flail; most threshing was done by steam and later gas-powered threshing machines which travelled from farm to farm. Wilson McNair described these cumbersome and sometimes dangerous machines this way:

The thresher was run and pulled by a traction engine. They moved slowly only about 2 mi. an hour. The engine had a water tank mounted on each side in the rear to carry water while it was moving from one place to another.... The engines all had whistles and they would blow them every once in a while when they were on the road so we would know they were coming. We had to haul up some wood to fire the engine before we threshed....

In later years we had self-packing and weighing threshers with blowers that moved the straw further from the thresher. One time Mr. Hornbaker threshed for us. We had a small engine and thresher that was pulled by a team. While we were washing up for dinner some one looked up and saw smoke, [on] the other side of the barn where the thresher was. All hands ran up there and pulled the thresher out of the way and saved the wheat that was threshed, but the straw burned up. A spark from the engine had fallen into the straw.[31]

During the summer months of the cultivation process, insect control was also a major consideration. By the late 1930s a few large farms, such as the Harrisons, could hire an airplane to dust their crops, but modest farms of necessity relied on hand labor for this, as most other chores. "As ... new varieties of clover, alfalfa, and other plants came to be used, seems like the insects came along with them," lamented one farmer.[32] The Japanese beetle, introduced into America in the 1920s, wrecked particular havoc with the crucial corn crop. "The Japanese beetle was just awful," recalled Ray Harrison, "it would eat the tassel up which pollinated the corn ... then would get right into the ear of the corn and go right down into the shuckings."[33] Against these pests, and the inevitable destruction of wildlife, weather, and weeds, the farmer had to maintain an eternal vigilance. Much of the growing season was spent in monitoring these destructive forces.

The benefits of this watchfulness became apparent with the harvest. As mentioned above, wheat was the earliest crop reaped but the major harvesting was done early in September. Corn was cut and shocked at this time, and the large task of filling the silo was undertaken. To do this stalks and leaves of the corn were chopped by an ensilage cutter. Like the thresher, this machine was generally owned by an outside agent; it travelled from farm to farm to process each farmer's fodder. The early cutters were powered by steam, but like numerous other farm instruments, gasoline-driven equipment was developed during World War I. On a large farm up to twenty men were needed to keep a threshing machine or ensilage cutter going. Bundles of corn were chopped by the machine and then conveyed to a fan which blew the ensilage through a pipe into the silo. There one to four men tamped it down and guided the nozzle on the blower pipe to insure even distribution. It was dirty work, the corn stalks oozing juice and sticking as tenaciously as burrs to the clothes, hands and hair of those working in the silo. A small landowner might complete the silo filling process in a day, but for large farms it often took the better part of a week.[34]

Just as the spring brought forth a burgeoning activity, so did things happen with a rush in the fall. Haying was done just before the corn harvest, in the hot, late summer days which would cure the new-mown grass in the field. To cut the hay the county's farmers often used a one- or two-horse rake with a single attachment to raise or lower the rake's teeth when passing over a meadow. The dried hay, with its almost overpoweringly sweet smell, was lifted by forks into a wagon, tramped down, then transported to fill bursting barns. The least mechanized farms forked the hay into the lofts by hand but later barns were equipped with a mechanical fork for lifting the hay. Haying had to be done at precisely the right time or the grass would not cure properly and the hay would spoil. The combination of heat, hard, backbreaking work, and the necessity for hurry made haying a particularly fatiguing time.[35]

Most of the harvest was used right on the farm. Like manure, which was recycled to enrich fields and gardens, the grain and hay crops went to nourish the farm's dairy animals. Little was marketed and little was wasted. "That proved to be the best thing you could do," noted Holden Harrison, "grow as much of your own feed for your cattle as you could. You sold your ... crop production through your milk can."[36]

The fruits of the year's labor came not only from the hay fields but from garden and orchard, whose abundance had to be gathered, preserved and stored in the late summer season. Fairfax County had once been a major truck farming section but the onslaught of insects and competition from large commercial orchards (such as those in the Shenandoah Valley) had relegated this produce to the realm of home use. The A. S. Harrison farm included plum, apple, peach and cherry trees and Margaret Mary Lee recalled that cherries, pears and apples grew in her family's orchard. Sometimes pears and apples were made into cider but most of the fruit was dried or canned for winter use. Many farmers made the extra effort to keep bees under their fruit trees because they aided pollination and produced honey from the blossoms. The Lees were among those who enjoyed the soft hum of the bees among the orchard trees. Margaret Lee especially liked to recall them darting busily between the fragrant white sheets, when the washing was hung in the yard.[37]

The vegetable garden, too, had a prominent place in the farm scheme. Elizabeth Rice noted that "everyone had a good garden, growing such things as sweet corn, limas, string beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and asparagus."[38] Others mentioned lettuce, herbs and popcorn in the family vegetable patch and many farms had grape arbors.[39] Like other areas of cultivation, the garden plot required care and attention for three seasons of the year. The round of soil preparation, planting, nourishing and harvesting added additional responsibilities to the multitude of duties which already crowded the sunlight hours. Still, the rewards were great: self-sufficiency, economy, and the enjoyment of the earth's fresh bounty.

With the harvest over the farmer would fill the less hectic winter hours with the unending minutia of the farm. Fence and equipment mendings, cutting ice from ponds and rivers, chopping wood, and grubbing up trees all had a part in his busy life. Another burst of activity occurred in early winter when animals were butchered for the year's meat. Most farm families bought their beef in Herndon, but nearly everyone kept hogs for home consumption.[40] Neal Bailey, a veteran of many local butcherings, described them in this particularly detailed manner:

Two to three meat hogs per year were raised and slaughtered, all about Thanksgiving. Farmers used to do everything by the almanac. Two men would grab a hog and throw it on its back and cut the jugular vein with a butcher knife. The pig was thrown then into a scalding trough--a metal trough with water placed over a wood fire burning in a trench.... In the old days, the local farmers heated rocks red hot and threw them in a big barrel of water. It was a day's work to haul rocks for this. The hair was scalded and scraped off. Then the hog was gutted. Old folks used to take the insides and make chitlins out of them. I never ate them myself. The hogs were hung up overnight in a shed or in a tree where dogs couldn't get it, to let the carcasses cure. The skin was left on the carcass, and next day, it was cut up and salted down in a box. It was kept tight so flies and mice couldn't get in.... Anything that was left in spring was smoked to preserve it through the summer.[41]

Each family preserved its own meat and as Emma Ellmore related, "everybody had his own pet recipe ... for mixing the salt and the brown sugar--and some smoked the meat and some didn't." Lard had to be rendered for storage in the cellar, sausage hand-ground and canned or frozen, the heads boiled until the meat left the bones, then chopped and pressed into a pan with the pot liquor to make headcheese. Butchering time seems to have been an especially unforgettable occasion, for its details stand out sharply in the minds of many. "After butchering each year, Mother made ... buckwheat cakes to eat with fresh sausage," reminisced Margaret Peck. "Baked on a long black griddle, over a wood stove, spread with homemade butter and topped with corn syrup, they were the right beginning for a winter day."[42] For Floris residents, the smells and tastes of a time seem to whirl the memory backward with particular acuity.

Even in the hectic activity of harvest, a farmer was obliged to move through the evening routine of milking, feeding and bedding his animals. With these tasks completed, and a final check on the barns to see that all was snug, the farmer's day was nearly complete by about 6:00. He ate a hearty supper, then read _The Southern Planter_, and possibly mended farm machinery or did a little work in the barn.[43] For those who arose at 4:00 a.m. "in all kinds of weather," sleep came early and the house was usually dark by 9:00 p.m.[44]

In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. His family was an integral part of this scheme; far from being removed from the household's form of support, they were intimately bound up in it. Wife, husband, children and grandparents all contributed in their distinct sphere. The term "family farm" was no idle denomination, but a recognition of the importance the entire family played in the smooth operation of the farm.

The relationship of a farm husband and wife was in many ways a truer partnership than that of the urban marriage. "A farmer needs a wife like he needs the rain," is an old farm saying, expounded for decades in the farmer's almanacs. It has now been collaborated by rural sociologists to show that farm efficiency was based largely on the partners' shared duties.[45] The farmers themselves seemed to realize this. In a 1932 nationwide survey of factors which farmers regarded as most important to their success, "co-operation of wives" was ranked second.[46]

The activities of rural men and women were co-equal, not identical. Women rarely worked in the fields except in the press of harvesting when they might drive a horse to pull up the hay fork--"what we've all done, I guess," agreed one group of Floris women.[47] They only occasionally aided the men in the barn. Edith Rogers remembered working with the stock as did Margaret Mary Lee, who helped with milking and also recalled washing the milk storage tank and other equipment. This pleased the local milk inspector who told her, "When women are in the barn, I know the equipment is clean."[48] Except for such intermittent work, the outside duties were left to the men. Instead, most women's activity was to be found in the farmhouse and garden. Her responsibilities encompassed the expected areas of housekeeping, decorating and sewing, and often the less obvious work of bookkeeping or lawnmowing.

The farm woman's most demanding task probably centered around the preparation and preservation of food, a vitally important function, for to waste or misuse food was to negate the hard labor of a year. In the current era of convenience foods, the time-consuming nature of cooking is easily forgotten. Just operating a wood-burning stove was a complicated task, attested to by the directions for laying a fire in a contemporary cookbook.