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market-farming - Re: for the male subscibers was Re: women and small market gardens

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  • From: Don Bowen <donb AT cts.com>
  • To: "market farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: for the male subscibers was Re: women and small market gardens
  • Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 21:55:09 -0800


At 09:07 PM 2/23/2000 , you wrote:

My mother was raised in a middle class home of the thirties in San Marino, California. She grew up with electricity, indoor plumbing, Red Car rides to all that Pasadena had to offer, and a telephone. My father grew up on a mixed dirt farm of the thirties in Kahoka, Missouri. He grew up with kerosene lanterns, outhouses, an occasional Saturday night trips to a town, and rural isolation.

They lived in Pasadena for a while then when my grandfather died, we moved to the farm. It was a complete cultural shock to my mother. She tried to bring a little culture by listening to the Met on Saturday mornings until the men came in and turned to the crop reports. She picked up what books she could from the library but had little time to read. Over the years she was the voice that got us electricity and indoor plumbing but she never overcame the isolation.

Her only consolation was her huge garden. She loved to plant and help things grow but had to restrict it to food plants. She hated all the preservation and daily hard work required of the farm. She finally decided she had enough and went back to school to get her teaching credential. With help from her father and a job teaching in one of Missouri's last one room schools, she divorced my father and went to Kirksvlle State Teachers College, then returned to California.

My father continued to pour the farm through a bottle and died in the early seventies during a lung cancer operation several years after losing the farm.

My mother is going strong at 81 years old and lives in Sunnyvale CA, She still loves to garden but will not plant food crops, ornamentals only. Now she is passing along the help she got by helping my son complete his studies at Berkeley.

Don Bowen donb AT cts.com
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
Internet development and software engineering

http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/



  • Re: for the male subscibers was Re: women and small market gardens, Don Bowen, 02/24/2000

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