Living on a Self-Sustaining Farm in Mid-20th Century Virginia

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This story is from Sarah Kohrs and submitted as part of our Wisdom from Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

Grape-stained fingers work stealthily to separate stems from the sticky purple fruit. Jelly, from the generations-old grape vines behind the farmhouse where my mother’s father was born, is still my favorite harvest each autumn. Diligently, my mother and I savor preservation practices that she enjoyed with her own mother many years ago. A resurgence of interest in living on a self-sustaining farm is making the farming way of life seem less like work and more like real living.

For my grandparents, Olen and Anna Mae Showman, who worked an almost 100-acre self-sustaining farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the mid-1900s, farming was a means of survival. Milking the cow, slopping hogs, gathering eggs, bridling the work horse or mule, and mending fences was a hard reality. Each day required daily chores most children nowadays consider part of the history books. Anna Mae baked bread daily, as well as washed laundry, sewed, and scrubbed floors on different days of the week. The black potbelly stove churned out more delicious food than smoke under her experienced hands. In the winter months, Anna Mae made quilts from clothing scraps while Olen sliced paths through snow for cows so that they could drink water from holes.

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