A Personal Witness
I never lived on a family farm myself. The closest I've been is summers, growing a victory garden with my father between two family farms in eastern Pennsylvania —Harleysville. Pennsylvania Dutch folks owned and worked those places. That sonufagun Harry Truman was the president of the United States.
The neighbors' farms were mixed farms. Both grew corn. One also had pigs, the other, dairy cows. Didn't look very romantic to me. Those neighbors worked long and hard.
The pigs stank pretty bad, so we kids usually kept our distance. But we loved to sneak into Durstine's cow barn and dive into the haystack from the top of the rafters. Once, Mr. Durstine chased us away with a pitchfork and told us never do it again. But he didn't say anything about his insurance policy. I think he was just afraid we would get hurt.
Toward the end of August, when the ears got ripe, Mr. Durstine would let us have a corn boil. We'd set up a big fire at the edge of the corn field and hang a cauldron of water over it. After the water boiled, we'd go into the field and pick some corn. Then we'd run back to the pot, shuck the corn and dump it in.