turn, gets seriously annoyed at Big Brother’s bossiness and purposely disrupts the workflow by acting the slowpoke. It’s all in a day’s work, the good and the notso-good. Camaraderie goes hand-in-hand with any sibling crew. In that regard, parents make allowances for a certain amount of monkey business. Wherever a dozen or so brothers and sisters work side by side, occasions for pranks arise on every hand, and few opportunities are altogether ignored. Many families possess a bumper crop of prankster lore, impressive in both scope and ingenuity. Aside from that, the age-old tradition of dangling a carrot on a stick is just as effective today as in centuries past. Incentives such as the promise of an end-of-thesummer trip to the zoo do wonders in helping schoolage children bear the heat of the day while hoeing sweet corn rows. I know that for a fact; once I was the hoe-er, then I was the dad. Sometimes no particular incentive is offered or needed.
On the farm next to ours lives 11-year-old David Lee, the youngest of nine children, presently a 6th grader in Hickory Hollow School. For a number of years now, he’s been the official caregiver of the occupants in the calf pens—bottle feeding and so on. Each evening, year-round, David Lee helps milk their 40 cows. Every Thursday morning since he’s been nine and a half, the little feller rolls out at four o’clock and takes his turn as morning chore boy. Little stepping stones such as this may seem insignificant, but they aren’t. When his number comes, he’s up and doing. The nice thing about it? David Lee gets to take a snooze after chores till it’s time to get ready for school. In my experience, all work and no play was a nonfactor. Children on every farm roundabout got time off to pursue hobbies—and still do. Pastimes in my own boyhood had to do with ponies, playing ball, the creek,
and anything outdoors. Horse-farming figures into family structure, too. A horse in harness requires water, oats, rest, and care—morning, noon, and evening— which brings the family together and sets an order to the day. In many larger families, the older siblings may have day jobs, but when suppertime rolls around, everyone’s home, everyone’s there to stick their feet under the table, and everyone’s talking. It’s the highlight of the day. On occasions when there are grain sheaves to be set in shocks or hay to be put up, these older siblings lend their muscle and might, giving the family at home a welcome boost with the harvest. Exactly how produce farmers go about handling the workforce and the handpicking required in their operations is beyond me. I don’t know diddly about it... other than it all looks formidable. To me, the best real-life paragon of large family cooperation revolves around a typical hay day on an Amish farm—or the way it used to be done. Once the hay is windrowed and ready to bale, Dad calls all hands on deck, top to bottom, boys and girls. Oftentimes the lineup spills into neighboring families. Dad oversees each part of the haymaking, helping out where needed, sometimes raking more windrows once the baling is underway. Grandpa handles the team pulling the baler. The oldest children stack bales in the haymow because that’s where the hardest, warmest, sweatiest work takes place. Middle-bracket children ride the wagon hooked to the back of the baler, lifting the bales from the chute and stacking them in their proper place on the wagon. Unloading the bales from the wagon to the elevator demands at least one sibling old enough to handle the job, reinforced by a couple of smaller children who roll the bales within reach. More little ones are scattered throughout, doing this, doing that, or doing nothing, delighted to be part of the goings-on. On hay day, everyone is on their best behavior. Even Curious George needs no intervention from the Man in the Yellow Hat. The littles, as yet exempt from
About Emily and Daniel Emily Hershberger with her husband and two children have an organic dairy near Mt Hope, Ohio. She enjoys farming, gardening, garage sales, and a good book. Daniel and Mae live on a 93-acre farm between Walnut Creek and Trail, Ohio. Five children, hay-making, and Black Angus cattle take up any spare time after work at Carlisle Printing. Questions and comments welcome: 330-893-6043.
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PLAIN VALUES
APRIL 2023
