RipleyRoots Home

Ripley Genealogy
Ripley Stories
Ripleys Now

Sullivan Genealogy
Sullivan Stories

Phillips Genealogy
Phillips Stories

Munro Genealogy
Munro Stories

Klein Genealogy

Moschel Genealogy
Moschel Stories

ThinkPint.com home

Carrying On

by theresa m ripley

Sib

I was born during harvest season in 1944. My first three weeks were spent at St. James Hospital in Pontiac, Illinois. My mother went home 10 days after my birth (the typical stay for an OB patient then) to help with the remaining harvest, and I followed a week and a half later. This was my introduction to farm life. First come crops, and then people.

We Ripleys, meaning my dad, liked to have clean bean fields. Are bean fields dirty? Yes, in my dad's judgement, if they had any butterprint, corn, or thistle plants in them. It was a yearly job to walk through our bean fields (as much as 100 acres) and weed out all disreputable plants.

My initiation to the Ripley Hoeing Club was at age two. Apparently, I had neither liking nor enthusiasm for the task. As we finished one swipe of the field, Mom observed that I was hoeless and asked me where I put it. I responded with something like, "me tired, put it down." This was bad news for the combine that would go through the field later in the season. So the rest of the Ripley Hoeing Club had to spend a few hours searching for my errant hoe. It was at this juncture that the Ripleys probably began to wonder if I was good farming material. They were a perceptive group!

I was introduced to another major farm job when I was about 8. It was working on the haying crew. Hay bales were brought in from the field on large flat-bed wagons. As each wagon arrived from the field it was parked under the large trap door of the barn loft. The two men on the wagon, usually Ray and one of the neighbors, stuck large tongs into the bales. The tongs were attached to a rope and tackle which were used to lift the bales into the barn. That's where Mom and I came in. We would both pull on the rope until the bales were even with the barn loft. Then after the bales worked their way into the barn, there was the final jerk on the rope which loosen the tongs from the bales. Mom and I did fine, except for that final, special jerk. It was not uncommon for Ray to get off the wagon and give the needed jerk and then scamper back to the wagon to set more bales. I attribute our difficulty to lack of strength; and as Mom would say, not keeping our lips pursed correctly. For whatever reason, my farming career was continuing to falter.

I did not do much better with chickens. I really hated chickens, and I especially disliked working in the henhouse. Feeding the chickens was a barely tolerable task, but gathering eggs was not. Mother was a natural at this, and I often watched her and tried to imitate her technique. It appeared simple enough. She slipped her hand in under a laying chicken and produced a lovely white egg. If I tried to do the same thing, in the same way, all I got was a pecked hand and a cracked egg. I knew what was wrong: my exit was too quick. Because I feared the pecking so much, I began to devise my own techniques. The one that worked the best was to take a handful of corn cobs with me into the henhouse and throw them at the chickens in the nests until they vacated, leaving the coveted eggs unattended. It took Mom a while to discover why the hens always seemed to be upset after my departure. When it was clear what was happening, Mom decided I was not suited for this work and turned me to feeding the calves and lambs.

This is one place I can report some success, up to a point. I liked the baby lambs and calves and was assisted on these chores with one to 25 of our resident cats. Our farm was never without cats. They lived in the barn, under the house, and were always underfoot. But they were great buddies for me. We, the cats and I, made quite a parade during chore time as I went to the barn to get the feed and then walked across the barnyard to the respective baby animals with at least 10 cats following me.

When the calves were young, I brought them warm milk in a bucket. I usually had two calves and two buckets. I would gather the calves and hold on to the two buckets as best I could. You needed to hold on to the buckets because the calves would immediately kick or knock over their supper. As soon as the calves got a little bigger and stronger, they would buck their heads; and as soon as one would finish, it would try to nuzzle out the other calf. I began to understand clearly the saying, "don't cry over spilt milk" because I spilt a lot of it. It seems I had found another farm task at which I was inept.

I was equally inept around grown cattle. Every night in the summer we had to move the cows from one pasture to another. The job of every Ripley present (too bad there were only four of us) was to stake out 1/4 of the open area and make sure the cows did not come through our area but moved on to the other pasture toward the barn. Somehow I imagined that the cows were more sinister than they were (too many Western movies, I guess) and hated the daily job.

My mother, father, and brother were beginning to wonder if I had any promise at all. My brother got a horse called Sonny Boy; and I am sure they thought Sib (that's what they called me) would like the horse also. What girl does not like horses? The first time I rode Sonny Boy I fell off and that was the end of that, thank you.

It was getting discouraging for all of us to find something Sib could do even moderately well. By this time I was about 10, an important time in a rural kid's life because at 10 they are eligible to join 4-H. 4-H was the largest organization of rural youth in the world. Our symbol was a green four-leaf clover with an H on each leaf. Many people have seen the symbol, but not all are sure what it means. The H's stand for head, heart, hands, and health. The pledge, which we recited at every meeting was, "I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living for my club, my community, and my country." Our local club was called The Busy Pikers (a pretty bad start, I know, but we lived in Pike Township).

I was eager to do several projects that first year, but Mom helped me decide to take just one. It was You Learn to Bake. Each 4-H project came with a stapled book with green covers, front and back. In between the covers were the instructions for how to carry out the project and places to record everything you did. Mom did her best to guarantee success during that first year. She even got rid of the old cookstove which burned cobs and coal and got a new gas stove.

Her hopes were higher than my achievements, but nevertheless I was awarded a B and red ribbon at the Livingston County Fair that year for the cookies. The cookies were displayed in the very precise measurements of a regulation 4-H display box. The box took me, or more correctly Mom and Dad, much longer to make than the cookies. It actually looked better than the three little shortbread cookies inside. We reused the box for the next 10 years.

The next year the 4-H projects selected were You Learn to Sew and ABC's of Foods. Mom had worked her way up to supervising two projects. The sewing project, especially, was a challenge. It seemed simple enough. The project required a gathered skirt with an elastic waist and a matching fringed scarf. But there is something called "the 4-H way" which is evidently very different than anything Mom was use to doing. Mom and a neighbor woman whose daughter was also a You Learn to Sew-er worked for hours getting our skirts done as Connie, the daughter, and I played.

Mom learned a lot the first two years I was in 4-H. For the rest of my 10-year tenure in 4-H I mainly did my own 4-H projects. My family suffered through Swedish Tea Ring, Chicken Fried Steak, Stuffed Pork Chops, Funny Cake, and lots and lots of Banana Bread. We also learned how to serve meals in compromise and family style. Although I cannot remember entirely the difference between the styles of service, I believe the Ripley crew preferred compromise style service which meant Dad did not have to dish up the meal.

I can say I had some success in 4-H at the local, county, and state level. At the local level I eventually became a junior leader where I assisted first and second year 4-Hers. It was then that I first got to make one of those gathered skirts with a matching fringed scarf. At the county level I had the opportunity to participate in speech, talent, and demonstration contests. The local club, which was The Busy Pikers, chose members every year to compete in the various county contests. I had this opportunity during the early years in my 4-H career and was often the youngest participate in many county-wide contests. My only experience with the state fair (other than our yearly family odysseys to it) was with a photography project. I received a first place at the county fair; and my photography project went to the state fair, where it received fifth place.

But all of this did not really make me a better farmer. One year I joined what was then called Boy's 4-H and took gardening. We always had a large garden so that seemed the natural and easiest thing to do (by this time Mom was out of the picture and I had to do my own projects). The best I can say about Boy's 4-H was you were around boys, all wearing their blue 4-H jackets with yellow stitching.

My farm career was not enhanced by high school. During my era girls did not take "ag" courses. Most girls took home economics. I had two years of home "ec" and even won the Betty Crocker Award my senior year. (Betty Crocker probably would not be pleased to know that I was the only girl in class to wait until her 40's to marry.) But home economics, like girl's 4-H, does not really teach you to farm. I considered careers as both a high school home economics teacher or a county home extension agent. But by my senior year in high school I had decided to pursue a career either as a business education teacher or a business career (in that era meaning being a secretary).

The closest I came to being employed in agriculture was working for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS), which was housed next to the Soil Conservation Service. Both are under the umbrella of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). For three summers I worked for the ASCS at the USDA. A standard office joke was to see how fast you could say ASCS at the USDA. Starting at age 17 it was my job to assess whether or not farmers were complying with the government programs. In order to get subsidies, the farmer had to comply with planting only so much corn, beans, wheat, or whatever. This, like all government programs, had very long, complex procedures.

First, aerial photos were taken of the land. ASCS employees went to each participating farm in the county and measured the farmer's actual crops and plotted it on the aerial maps. Then the aerial maps were brought into the office where we had to calculate the acreage of each field in the government program. It was taxing math work because there are very few regular shaped fields. I found creative ways to make triangles, rectangles, and squares out of odd-shaped fields and then come up with the total acreage. It was our responsibility to indicate whether or not the farmer was in compliance with the program. If he was over, it was marked in big red letters. If the farmer was not in compliance, it could mean thousands of dollars to him. As you might well imagine, farmers who got an overcompliance letter came right into the office. It was the job of the person who had done the report to deal with the farmer. There I was at age 17 dealing with 50-year-old farmers who were hopping mad, and I was backing up my measurements and calculations of irregular fields to him. It was a growth producing job as we say. It was also another time when I wondered if farm life was for me.

The summer after my sophomore year was the last I worked for the ASCS. After my junior year in college, I worked at a resort in Michigan, something that I had wanted to do for the last two summers. It was the beginning of the drift away from the farm. Even though I had been to college for two years, it was a college just 25 miles from home and I managed not to encounter much new except for classwork. My roommates were friends from high school, and I mainly kept my nose stuck in a book. The junior summer changed that. The Michigan resort was a Jewish resort catering to the Jewish people of Chicago and Detroit; I had never been around Jewish people. Half of the workers at the resort were blacks from the South; I had never been around blacks. The rest of the workers were from all over the U.S., and most of them had never spent any time on a farm. It was an eye opener for the Ocoya farm girl. The year was 1965 and Sib was turning 21.

Now it is 35 years later. What remains of the farm for Sib? First and foremost, farm life gave me a solid base. My last major farm stay was in the summer of 1964 as I worked at the ASCS. Since then I have traveled a great deal and met a wide variety of people. For me that has been a relatively easy thing to do. The reason I think this is so is because I have always been able to look back to a time when I lived with people who moved with the ebb and flow of the seasons. A time when neighbors seldom moved; and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins lived close by. A time when the work was hard, but the rewards were sweet. A time when all had to be interdependent. It is a time that has passed, but memory keeps it alive.