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I'm feeling nostalgic today and thought I'd share a little something with you all. As most of you probably know I was raised on a farm in East Tennessee and have lots of fond memories from a much gentler time than we see today."

My paternal grandmother was a very industrious lady, as most were back then, she always had a few rows of cotton growing on the side of her huge vegetable garden. She also had a strawberry patch with the most wonderful tasting strawberries ever.

The purpose of growing the cotton was to have it to make quilt batts for the many hand stitched quilts she made. Quilting was usually done in the winter time when there wasn't a garden to take care of plus all the canning of that bounty.

I can remember helping her pick the seeds out of the cotton bolls and putting them in a Mason jar to save for the next years planting. After picking the seeds out the cotton was then "carded" using what was known as "cards". This process produced a small batt which was laid out on a quilt lining that had been attached to the home made quilting frames that hung from the ceiling. After enough were made then the quilt top was added and it was all stitched together to make the quilt.

My grandmother died in 1957 and I have often wondered what ever happened to those cards.

Farm life is a self sufficient life style, hard but satisfying. My grandmother always had a cow to milk, as did my mother, for milk and butter and about 100 chickens for eggs to sell and fried chicken or chicken and dumplings for Sunday dinner and turkeys geese and guineas.

As you can probably tell, I have very fond memories of my childhood. :)

Kathleen, that is just one more thing we've gotten away from, helping a neighbor in need. For the most part, most of us don't even know who our neighbors are.

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Hi Mary Evelyn,

My grandparents had a corn farm and cattle in South Dakota, and they'd keep diaries of how to start growing the corn indoors in the harsh winters, they'd plant it on screens on the floor, over flat boxes of soil, and they had to keep the young corn plants protected from mice, they really kept accurate written notes about a lot of things. The much older generations really did a lot of detailed work. During the Depression, my grandpa lent a cow to a neighbor so they could have milk, and the neighbor promised to give the cow back when they were doing better financially. That's old-school farm life and neighborliness and dealing with the weather and financial struggles in a real people-to-people way.

Quote:

I'm feeling nostalgic today and thought I'd share a little something with you all. As most of you probably know I was raised on a farm in East Tennessee and have lots of fond memories from a much gentler time than we see today."

My paternal grandmother was a very industrious lady, as most were back then, she always had a few rows of cotton growing on the side of her huge vegetable garden. She also had a strawberry patch with the most wonderful tasting strawberries ever.

The purpose of growing the cotton was to have it to make quilt batts for the many hand stitched quilts she made. Quilting was usually done in the winter time when there wasn't a garden to take care of plus all the canning of that bounty.

I can remember helping her pick the seeds out of the cotton bolls and putting them in a Mason jar to save for the next years planting. After picking the seeds out the cotton was then "carded" using what was known as "cards". This process produced a small batt which was laid out on a quilt lining that had been attached to the home made quilting frames that hung from the ceiling. After enough were made then the quilt top was added and it was all stitched together to make the quilt.

My grandmother died in 1957 and I have often wondered what ever happened to those cards.

Farm life is a self sufficient life style, hard but satisfying. My grandmother always had a cow to milk, as did my mother, for milk and butter and about 100 chickens for eggs to sell and fried chicken or chicken and dumplings for Sunday dinner and turkeys geese and guineas.

As you can probably tell, I have very fond memories of my childhood. :)