Sheridan Hutchinson
Rosa Thornley
English 3630
23/01/2016
Tracing My Family Farming Roots
The most recent generation in my family to be involved with agriculture is my grandmother, Mary Jo, on my mother’s side. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away when I was only two years old, and so to find out more information about her farming life, I interviewed my mother. While she did the best she could to remember her mother’s childhood, there is still some information that we’re missing, so there are some assumptions made on my part.
Mary Jo’s family immigrated to America from Denmark in July of 1870. Her father, Joseph, began farming in Levan, Utah around 1920. The farm was about 120 acres large, and this area was dispersed all over the area. My mother doesn’t know anything about the farm during this time, since the only stories she knew of the farm came from Mary Jo, who was born in 1935. Mary Jo and her family didn’t grow large scale crops for income, but instead raised livestock. They only large crop they had was used for hay, which they used to feed their animals. They had sheep, cows, horses, chickens, and pigs. They used all of these animals, except for the horses, for their meat (they also collected eggs from the chickens, and only killed the chickens when they weren’t useful for eggs anymore.) My mother said that they only sold cows commercially, which is where the majority of their yearly income came from, and kept the meat from the other animals for themselves, their extended family, and for trading locally.
They farmed a lot for just themselves. They had a large garden in which majority of their food was grown, they kept a lot of meat and eggs for themselves, and had only a couple of dairy cows for themselves. For everything they couldn’t farm or make themselves, they would trade eggs or meat in town. They farmed during the Great Depression, but my mother told me that their family seemed to do alright during this time, since they were able to produce their own food (it’s important to note that my mother is not exactly sure of this, since Mary Jo rarely spoke of the Depression since she was only a small child.)
When I asked my mother what kind of equipment they used for farming, she could only remember the bare minimum. She says she remembers that they had a tractor, which parallels with the Ag Classroom website. The all purpose tractors were popularized in 1930, which, making an assumption, is most likely when Joseph got his tractor. I also asked my mother how they irrigated their hay crop and garden. She said that they didn’t have any man made irrigation for the field, but instead relied on rain to water their hay. She did say they had a well though, with a hose, and that is how they watered their personal garden.
The knowledge of my grandmother and her childhood on the farm is limited to me. Hopefully with a little more time and research, I can learn more about her. Her family continued to farm in Levan until 1985, when her brother Leo, the last one to keep up the farm, passed away.
"Historical Timeline." Agriculture in the Classroom. National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 2014. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.
Hutchinson, Vickie. Personal interview. 22 January 2016.
