Cooperation and Competition Community Building among Farmers in Providence, Utah, 1940–1960

Cooperation and Competition Community Building among Farmers in Providence, Utah, 1940–1960

BY AMY C. HOWARD

Ten minutes south of Logan, Utah, in the Cache Valley, lies the town of Providence—a model of modern suburbia, with new homes set on quarter-acre lots and the promise of more construction to come. The downtown heart of Providence, in contrast, is characterized by historic homes and large plots, reminders of the town’s past as a place settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1880s. Part of that past was a thriving fruit-growing area along the town’s eastern bench. The Providence bench, now filled with winding suburban neighborhoods, once produced fruit bountifully, helped along by canals and winds from the canyons. As with other regions of Utah, the fortunes of agriculture in the Cache Valley fluctuated throughout the twentieth century, with an orchard boom in the early years, depression in the 1920s and 1930s, recovery and growth during World War II and the postwar era, and, finally, mechanization and consolidation as the century wore on. 1

This article focuses on the patterns of working and socializing established by the farmers on the Providence bench and the successes they accomplished through community ties and folk practices in the decades following the Great Depression. It is based on interviews I conducted with the children of the fruit farmers, their parents having passed on, and the people who in their youth picked fruit on the farms. Their recollections tell a story of family, community, nostalgia, and struggle. Even with the inaccuracies of memory and the filter of individual perspective, it is clear that many of the farmers on the bench tended toward collaboration in the face of hardship. Their interactions were defined by a balance between cooperation and competition, fueled by the cultural norms and values of their small neighborhood. A sense of interdependency made it possible for this generation of farmers and their families to prosper, despite environmental factors and the ups and downs of the economic climate. 2

A photograph taken by Russell Lee, under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration, entitled “Mormon farmer and his family, Cache County, Utah.” August 1940. Russell Lee, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF34-037258-D.

This collection of personal narratives represents a folk history of Providence that, like all folk histories, exists alongside the official history. Popular definitions of folklore and history often place the two concepts in opposition to each other—the former equated with fabrications and the latter with truth—yet as formal disciplines, history and folklore complement each other in a surprising way, with folklore providing a lens for understanding “the whole of the human condition.” 3 For the purpose of this article, folklore refers to the traditions and practices of culture that exist alongside formal institutions, such as government.

When collecting contemporary occupational folklore (including work techniques, material culture, and interpersonal communication) researchers often rely on observing “cultural scenes” or the “folk” in action. 4 Because the “cultural scenes” of Providence’s midcentury fruit fields are unavailable, we instead can understand the area’s occupational culture through the collected narratives of those who lived it. Those narratives identify patterns of community and provide vignettes of social history. 5 In them, the children of the farmers describe the scenes of their childhood, a sphere where familial livelihood met the larger community. Although many of Providence’s farmers had additional jobs, their lives were deeply connected to the other farmers whose land lay near theirs and to the neighborhood youth who helped in their fields.

In Providence, as in all communities, individuals played roles defined by gender, occupation, family, group affiliations, region, and geography but also by personal preferences and situations. 6 The Providence fruit farmers had a variety of identities that shaped their interactions with each other in the field and in town. Their larger regional identities as farmers in the Cache Valley, descendants of Mormon pioneers, added another layer of meaning. Within this region of the “Mormon West,” in a town founded during a period of Mormon expansion, the people on the Providence bench were a specific community of their own, connected by the piece of land they farmed. 7 Even more narrowly, these farmers identified as individuals, protecting their own water rights and profits. The interplay between community support and individual strength could create conflict as individuals negotiated a variety of identities. 8

Memories of conflict, or at least hard feelings, between various regions and groups in Cache Valley and Providence itself varied from person to person, but some aspect of division exists in the narratives of everyone I interviewed, on both small and large scales. Some of my informants described resentment between the congregations (or wards) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Providence, stemming from the division of the original Providence Ward in to the First and Second wards. The Providence Ward had been meeting in what is now the Old Rock Church on Main Street, which the members had funded and built themselves. When the church formed the Second Ward, it asked the congregants to build another chapel, despite their contributions to the first church. 9 The members of the First Ward, meanwhile, continued to meet in the Old Rock Church and did not contribute to the building of the Second Ward meetinghouse. In this case, conflict arose on a small scale in the Latter-day Saint community in Providence. Of course, some people only remembered that a social divide existed between the members of the two wards because they did not attend regular church meetings together, a discrepancy in memory that might be due to the passage of time or their own families’ non-involvement in the dispute. If much animosity existed, it clearly was soon forgotten and did not pass on to the youth from their parents. The strength of the community, then, could supersede conflict.

Providence, Utah, circa 1929. Map created by Deb Miller, Utah Division of State History.

The Old Rock Church in Providence, Utah. Latter-day Saints began building the church in 1869, finishing in 1872. Today, it is used as a bed and breakfast and events venue. Amy C. Howard, photographer.

An individual’s affiliation with larger groups also affected integration in the community and overall social cohesion between neighborhoods. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Latter-day Saint community in Providence was especially strong because most of its inhabitants were affiliated with the church. If an individual did not belong to the faith, my interviewees pointed that out in their narratives. The LDS church sponsored most of the community activities at this time, so not attending church led to a certain amount of social exclusion. On the other hand, religion did not seem to affect farmers’ views of each other or inclusion in a professional sense.

Another division existed between the farmers on the bench and the townspeople in Providence. The severity of these differences again depended on individual perspective. One woman admitted it was common opinion in town that those who lived up on the bench were unpopular and unfashionable. Mostly, though, the social divide existed between those who worked on farms and those who did not. Joan Lofthouse remembered her surprise when an old friend labeled her childhood-self as a “white slave girl” because Lofthouse had worked much harder than her friend and the others of her set. 10 Speaking about the youth in Providence, Shayne Mathews conceded that he “always called them ‘town kids’ because . . . I thought they had it easy. We were always on the farm and they got to do other stuff. But a lot of those kids that worked in town, their parents owned property outside of town, so they were working on farms too. It was very much a farming community.” According to Mathews, they all attended the same school and went to the same church, so the only apparent difference between them was that families like the Mathews lived “in the sticks.” 11

Other regional rivalries might have existed from town to town in Cache Valley. One man from Wellsville, on the other side of the valley, said he felt animosity directed toward him for being on the wrong turf during the period when he courted his wife, who had grown up in Providence. Some of the animosity between towns might have stemmed from a combination of geography and human nature: as water ran down from the mountains, each town progressively received less water as farmers closer to the mouth of the canyon took more than their share. Mendon, for instance, was one town on the “honest” end of the irrigation system. 12

Water has always been an essential part of the history of the communities in Cache Valley. The strain that water put on the community, as well as its importance, are evident through the vast number of personal narratives and legends on the subject contained in the Fife Folklore Archives at Utah State University, as well as the coverage given to water systems in local histories. The issue of water extends beyond farming and is a relevant concern today as the population of Providence grows, putting a strain on the available resources. 13 In the early days of white settlement in the valley, as elsewhere in Utah, Latter-day Saint pioneers worked cooperatively to dig canals and manage water. By 1860, the county court supervised water appropriation, a difficult task it had passed on to irrigation companies and water districts by 1876. With shifts in Utah’s water law occurring in 1880 and 1903 especially, management increasingly moved “from private and local entities to public agencies.” The doctrine of prior appropriation (or first in time, first in right) became codified in law, with water rights becoming a salable commodity, not always attached to a specific piece of land. 14

On the Providence bench lands, the system was not much different than other areas of Utah. The Spring Creek Water Association controlled the water schedule, and the amount of shares a person held determined the frequency and length of time his or her water turn would be. Art Bitters described in depth his family’s experience with the irrigation system: “[Dad] had water, at least, I would say, twice a week. You’d rotate though. The hours you’d have would rotate. Sometimes you’d have it in the morning. Sometimes you’d have it in the afternoon. Sometimes you’d have it at night, and so it wouldn’t be the same all the time.” Each person knew when their water turn was through charts distributed by the water association. There were multiple ways to accrue shares of water. Bitters recalled, “Sometimes . . . when you bought the land, it would come with a certain number of shares of water. And sometimes you wouldn’t have any water shares with a piece of property, and you’d have to buy it from somebody else. That’s what happened to a lot of people who would buy homes or that would buy property and the farmer would sometimes sell his water rights and sometimes he wouldn’t. It just depends what you are entitled to with the land you bought.” 15

In this arid climate, people made the most of the water flow they had, dividing water turns up at all hours of the day and night in order to maximize each person’s share. Because the watering turns were predetermined, each farmer had to accept the schedule and take advantage of his allotment—even if it occurred in the middle of the night. Art Bitters only had to irrigate in the middle of the night when his father was working second jobs during lean years, but it was a task he remembered vividly. “You’d have an alarm clock. You’d just sleep in the truck or in the car and just be up there. You’d get out and set the water, get it running down all the different furrows. Then it seemed like you just barely got it set and you’d just lay down for a minute and the alarm clock would go off again and you’d have to go out and do it all over again. Just every couple of hours, and if you didn’t do it that way, you wouldn’t get [everything] irrigated.” 16 It was not hard work, but the sleepless nights were hard on a teenage boy. Lex Baer explained that he would take his dog out with him to irrigate at night because of the rattlesnakes. 17 Overall, it was an uncomfortable, sometimes unsettling experience that they all had to participate in at one time or another.

Despite their mutual experiences with farming and the collective need for water, the shared, honor system needed for the irrigation system to work led to tensions when members of the community took water out of turn, innocently or not. Barre Toelken noted that in this religious community, where sharing and giving were considered godly qualities, anger and violence over water were, surprisingly, generally accepted. “Bert Wilson recalls,” Toelken related, “that the only time he saw his father get violently angry was when he caught a neighbor stealing water (taking Wilson’s water turn) and chased him across the fields with a shovel, trying to hit him.” Sometimes, water rights took precedence over both Christian charity and the law. Angry reactions to going out of turn or blatantly stealing water seemed justified, given the absolute necessity of water to crop survival, and thereby, to the farmers’ families, not to mention the pains that each farmer took to stay within the schedule. 18

Among the farmers on the bench, these same tensions often existed but did not turn to violence. Art Bitters further clarified, “I can remember sometimes when people got pretty upset about not getting what they thought [was] their share of the water. Water some years was pretty short, and when there wasn’t a lot of water to go around, yeah, there were sometimes people’s tempers got pretty heated.” He did not recall any physical altercations but knew of “a couple of cases when somebody would be irrigating down the line and somebody’d put a dam in and cut the water off and you’d have to chase up and see what was happening. . . . There was some strong feelings about people not being too good about sharing their times.” 19 The bench farmers were a tight-knit group, which is apparent in the way they resolved their conflicts without violence; further, they understood each other’s need for water because they all farmed the same crops. On the other hand, they also needed to tend to their individual welfare. The water turns were determined in order to benefit the entire community; their folk enforcement of these turns occurred quite naturally as they protected their individual rights.

Shayne Mathews, the son of Morris Mathews, described similar experiences with water. He too recalled the water schedule and occasionally having to get up in the middle of the night to irrigate. Mathews added that his family would have to “set” the water before their allotted time in order maximize their water turn. “There would be problems with water from time to time. I don’t remember any, what I would call, serious conflicts with any of [the other farmers] that way.” When issues did arise, “most of the time it was accidental. Once in a while you’d find that kind of regularly, your head gate wouldn’t be clear down and somebody would be taking all of the water that should be coming to you. And that happened a little bit, but usually it was an accidental thing where somebody got the wrong turn.” 20

Water flowing from Spring Creek in Providence Canyon. Amy C. Howard, photographer.

Again, Mathews described the general understanding of human error and the resolution of problems in a mostly peaceable manner in this corner of Providence. Incidents of intentional water stealing happened, but for the most part, the farmers on the bench all chose to stick with the schedule. Although irrigation was a nuisance to the teenagers assigned the chore (and likely to the adult farmers themselves), their diligence in maintaining the irrigation schedule aided in allaying any possible confrontation between their parents and other farmers.

Because a number of farmers on the bench and across the entire Cache Valley raised fruit, one would expect there to have been competition among the farmers to find buyers for their harvests. Fruit production in Cache Valley originally found a large market in the mining operations in Idaho and Montana, where the farmers could sell their wares at exceptional prices. 21 It continued to be a profitable industry, as evidenced by the number of farmers who took it up. 22 Farmers generally spent the afternoon hours peddling their wares and delivering orders to stores, leaving their wives and children home to sell fruit to people who stopped by. LaVon Baer had a flair for salesmanship, according to his children, actively building relationships with store owners. Each farmer usually sold to the same few stores, so Eloise Baer Toolson did not remember much competition among the farmers themselves, describing instead the understandings between the farmers and local merchants as gentlemen’s agreements. 23

Then, in the 1950s, prices for fruit dropped dramatically for a number of reasons, including problems with middlemen. Wes Bitters remembered his father being one of the first to grow berries specifically. His parents were never rich, he said, and they probably never made more than $6,000 to $7,000 per year, but berries proved to be a successful crop, so others with land on the bench started their own berry production. Bitters blamed the oversupply of fruit for the precipitous drop in prices. This drop came at a time when berries had been steadily gaining value. “And I think berries, I could be wrong in this, I can’t remember that well, but I think a case of berries probably in the ’40s started out for $2.50 and by the time we got into the early ’60s, they were . . . maybe eight dollars a case. Dewberries were twelve; they were expensive,” Bitters recalled. The exact numbers might have become hazy in his memory over the years, but the problems associated with slipping prices did not. Bitters explained that “because of the overabundance in the supply, the stores could haggle. And so, all of a sudden, people were selling berries for two dollars a case.” This led to negative returns on production. “Well, you couldn’t pay a picker. You couldn’t pay for fertilizer and developing your crop for two dollars a case.” 24

In response, the farmers banded together to form the Cache Fruit Growers Association to regulate prices and, in some cases, remove the need for a middleman. 25 Wes Bitters recalled a different name than is recorded in Providence and Her People, but he remembered the action plan they created and the impact it had. The farmers agreed that all surplus berries that they did not have orders for should not go to stores, but rather, “they would take them to a location over in town and this location . . . on the back side of the Capitol Theater, that parking lot, and that’s where the Cache Valley Berry Association was.” If store owners wanted the farmers’ produce, “they would come down to the Berry Association or have the Berry Association deliver the berries to the store. That way, we controlled price.” 26

Harvey Mohr also remembered this cooperative arrangement. “It was the one out by the old courthouse on Main Street. And there was a basement entrance in the back. And all us local farmers, when it was berry season would pull back there and take all the berries down and they then would distribute them out to stores and dealerships, kind of the co-op thing. I don’t remember what we called it.” 27 His memory adds to Wes Bitters’s account by explaining the actual distribution of the berries. The association took an active part in the distribution of farmers’ goods instead of being only a type of farmers’ market. The arrangement eventually failed, but it did alleviate the pricing problem for a short time. Meanwhile, the farmers found buyers through other means, such as the Cache Commission Company, or they resorted to selling their goods commercially to canneries. 28 When California berries entered the market in the 1960s, a trend spurred on by mechanization and other advancements in agricultural technology, there was no action that could save the local strawberry farmers’ business as customers flocked to this new commodity. 29 Everyone agreed that imported berries were flavorless, but they were also much cheaper.

Shayne Mathews explained that in the case of “peas and such, Del Monte bought them all. Grain would sell to mills in Logan.” Sugar beets also fit this category, because farmers sold to the sugar factory in Lewiston while it was in operation. Selling commercially—or selling produce, perhaps at a lower price, to large companies for canning and processing—generally seems to have been more lucrative than filling direct orders to grocery stores or individuals because the demand was more constant. In the case of the fruit, which the farmers could not sell commercially, Mathews said, “we kind of all developed our own clientele. And we had customers that bought peaches from us for as long as I can remember, as long as I was living up there. . . . We never really advertised or anything. They just knew that’s where we were. And the other farmers up there had the same kind of [situation].” 30 The reliance on repeat customers to sell fruit was common among all the farmers on the bench.

The Mathews and their neighbors gained clientele by word of mouth. Shayne Mathews described the long gravel lane up to their house that customers might have missed without guidance. His mother painted a sign to point their customers in the right direction. “She was kind of arty too. . . . It was a guy pointing . . . and said ‘Mathews’ Peaches.’ I remember us having that.” 31 Mathews supposed that others had similar signs in place, a supposition that Harvey Mohr’s memories confirmed. Mohr recalled that while he was growing up, helping on his father’s farm, he built and painted a number of signs for selling fruit. “Seems like most people would make a sign to stick out” in front of their houses. To Mohr, the signs did not represent competition because there was not much traffic along the road. They too had mostly repeat customers who came to buy produce. “Except for the cherries which were more commercial,” this was the method his family used to sell most of their fruit. 32

As the fruit industry became harder to maintain, farmers switched to commercial products. The Bitters were “fortunate to have switched to apples” ten years before the berry market bottomed out. 33 The Mohrs sold cherries commercially, as did the Mathews after Shayne was grown and had left the house. Cherry growing was not part of his farming experience, but it was for Skarlett Mathews, Shayne’s younger sister by about fifteen years. The families had to diversify and adapt with the market, an inevitability their collaborative efforts could not prevent.

From planting and maintaining crops to harvesting and selling them, fruit farming was hard work. The Providence bench farmers all faced the same kind of struggle each year as they combatted the dry climate and cold winters. Everyone shared stories about irrigating and all of them feared late freezing temperatures. The Bitters, as well as other farm families, lit bonfires on cold nights to keep the fruit warm, and the Baers sprayed the fruit with water so the water would freeze and not the fruit. They all contended with the same plant viruses that would spread across the entire area, especially affecting the strawberries and raspberries. And they all understood and were connected by the need for a second job when harvests came up lacking. These connections bound them together as an occupational folk group and as a community.

One practice that epitomized community was the giving and selling of “starts” (those parts of a plant used for propagation) within the neighborhood, a practice that followed patterns of exchange and bartering found on the bench and in other rural communities. 34 When Mormon pioneers came to Utah, their leaders specifically instructed them to plant fruit. None of the people I interviewed definitively knew where the plants their parents grew had originated, but they speculated that the pioneers brought non-native fruits and vegetables with them.

A Cache County, Utah, farmer standing in his orchard, which the Farm Security Administration helped him establish. August 1940. Russell Lee, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF34-037189-D.

This idea is supported in part by historical scholarship. Records and diaries show that settlers often brought seeds from their homelands or other areas. They also ordered away for new varieties over the years, as Brigham Young did to receive “peach pits and apple seeds” and as George D. Watt did throughout the 1850s and 1860s, passing his knowledge and seeds to others along the way. 35

As in the Salt Lake Valley, the early settlers of Providence must have engaged in a combination of sharing, bringing, and buying seeds and starts. Lex Baer remembered his father ordering their plants from a nursery in Ogden. 36 The longtime Providence resident Ike Christensen, when asked about the origins of the plants in his parents’ garden, described another method for receiving plants: “You didn’t order anything. You’d go to the neighbors. . . . Come spring there’s a lot of raspberry starts coming off from the roots. So you’d cut them off and bring them home and plant them. That was how you propagated the species from one field to another.” He still maintains that practice now. “My neighbor bought some raspberries, good ones, and so that’s the kind I grow. And the name of them, I don’t know, but they’re good berries.” 37 In gardening and even in subsistence agriculture in Providence, a common way of getting berries and other fruits was simply to ask for a start from a neighbor.

The farmers on the bench also helped each other by selling starts for berries to one another. Art Bitters explained that “people would come and buy plants from [them] sometimes when they wanted to get . . . some starters.” Strawberry plants “throw out a runner” each year: “And you’d just go through, and you’d dig those up, and they’d sell them to people. And that’s probably where my dad got his original ones, from my grandfather. But I don’t know . . . where they got the original ones.” 38 The common practice at the time would suggest they bought starts from local farmers, as Harvey Mohr believed his father did, or ordered them from a nursery as the Baers most likely did, according to Lex’s recollection. As these plant starts and seeds transferred from one person to another, they became part of a network of trust and community among the farm families.

A July 1940 photograph by Russell Lee, originally captioned “Young town girl picking berries in Cache County, Utah. Because of diversification of crops, no migrant labor is needed or used in this section of Utah.” The teenagers who picked fruit for Providence farmers, especially the girls, had their own traditions of songs and sociality. Russell Lee, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF33-012852-M3.

The fruit growers also tapped into each other’s methods and fruit varieties. This applied especially to the strawberry fields because the plants only bore fruit for two or three years. Harvey Mohr and his father rotated the varieties they produced in their acre-and-a-half field among Marshall, Kasuga, and Utah Shipper cultivars. The Baers, on the other hand, grew mostly Marshall strawberries, according to Lex’s memory, the sugar-packed jam berry that was not hardy in cold temperatures. Wes Bitters remembered his father Melvin searching for a berry better for their climate and being one of the first to plant Lindalicious, a berry that was still sweet, yet hardier than the Marshall. Melvin then shared his newfound discovery with others on the bench, who started growing it. The farmers on the bench, in other words, were planting similar varieties and were open to sharing ideas, strategies, and plants with each other. 39

Another item that symbolized the relationships among the farmers was machinery. On Morris Mathews’s farm, along with apples, they “raised alfalfa, grains, barley and wheat” and “oats once in a while.” During his lifetime, Shayne Mathews witnessed a remarkable progression of technology. Early on, his family used grain binders to gather the wheat into bundles. “This was a time when everybody worked together because there were only a few threshers in the valley.” The Mathews would “hire a threshing machine to come” at harvest and “then a lot of the neighbors would come and help” them haul in the wheat bundles. “At that time we were still hauling with a team of horses and a wagon. . . . That was a time when you’d get a lot of cooperation.” 40 This pattern changed when combine harvesters became the machine of choice.

The difficulty of the harvest prior to modern technology necessitated more manual labor; hence, the farmers’ need for support from each other. Although farmers paid fruit pickers for their labor, the pickers consisted of family and friends—rather than workers who had migrated from other parts of the country—giving the harvest a communal, cooperative feeling. The farmers also commonly understood that they would assist each other when machinery broke down. For example, if a farmer’s tractor broke, it was imperative that he receive help because the timing of planting and harvest were so exact—and repairs were so costly and time consuming—that he would otherwise miss vital parts of the season. In contrast to water rights, where self-concern kept the entire community in check, the sharing of equipment and labor was based on a sense of community welfare and empathy. 41

A set of photographs taken by Russell Lee in 1940 in Mendon, across the Cache Valley from Providence, captured this spirit of collaboration through images of farmers using a sprayer owned by a cooperative created by the Farm Security Administration. Like the farmers who participated in such institutional cooperatives, the farmers on the Providence bench supported each other but on a folk, or noninstitutional, level. Speaking of Royal Gessel, Lex Baer elaborated on the importance of congeniality for the people on the bench, “He was kind of a loner, kind of a different guy. I got along with him. Because if you’re raising fruit, you kind of have to do some things, or you should, to get along with the other guy.” 42 One of the benefits of “getting along with the other guy” was the use of farm equipment when help was scarce. By analyzing the use and sharing of sprayers in the area, we can see how the farmers settled tensions through collaboration. These sorts of reciprocal services also fostered a sense of occupational community on the bench. Ironically, life-giving water drove the farmers apart, but the use of sprayers—machines with lethal purposes—brought people together.

A sprayer, part of a Farm Security Administration cooperative, in use in Cache County, Utah. The fruit farmers on the Providence bench had their own informal, cooperative methods of sharing equipment and work. Russell Lee took this photograph in August 1940, as part of a series of images depicting the FSA work in the county. Russell Lee, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF34-037218-D.

Of this type of cooperation Shayne Mathews recalled, “I don’t remember a lot of problems up there with the neighbors. We all got along pretty well. As a matter of fact, it was, you know—we would help each other because—like we used Royal Gessel to spray for us sometimes.” Melvin Bitters and Floyd Newbold also sprayed for them. Mathews continued, “And so we did different things and we might help them with something they were doing. Everybody got along pretty good up there.” They didn’t directly exchange services but “maybe somebody would have a piece of equipment that maybe somebody else didn’t have, and if you needed that, you could usually borrow it, or he’d come and do whatever you needed done for you. It was that kind of a thing.” The Mathews had their own sprayer, but because his father had a second job, “he would just hire the other guys to come and spray. That way us kids weren’t spraying the fruit and maybe spraying each other [laughs].” 43

Although keeping chemicals away from children did play a role in this arrangement, there was also a sense of propriety and tradition involved in it. Those with more experience and maturity were in charge of the spraying. It did not matter if the equipment belonged to them or not. “Because of the chemicals and because of the whole feel there,” Mathews explained. “They would keep good track of it” and “would make arrangements for the whole summer,” which ensured the spraying got done properly by a single person. This in turn benefitted those who farmed full time and did not have extra income from any kind of part-time job. 44

Harvey Mohr, whose father worked part-time for LeGrand Johnson Construction, explained how the process unfolded when Melvin Bitters came to spray for them. “Wes’s dad had an old wooden sprayer. . . . We’d get him to come up, and then Dad and I’d sit on the back of it, and we’d spray all our fruit trees right around off the end of the tractor, and then we’d spray our fruit. We’d fill it full of water and pesticide and spray.” 45 Bitters came along and helped drive, but the two Mohrs also participated, making it a team effort between the farmers.

The Mohrs had a similar relationship with other farmers on the bench. “Newbolds lived right by our four acre piece . . . on the bench. On Providence Canyon Road, going up. . . . He had a sprayer too. He’d spray for us once in a while.” This kind of cooperation happened quite a bit, Mohr agreed, but there was no kind of code or formality involved with it. “You’d have to spray for apples two or three times a year and you had to know right when to spray. So when it was time to spray, why,” Newbold would “give us a call or something and say, ‘Got my sprayer, if you want a spray.’ And I think we paid him, you know. We paid him to come spray [and] use his sprayer.” 46

The farmers who owned the sprayers kept track of the appropriate time to spray; they knew who needed their services and made sure they were taken care of. In this sense, spraying turned into a second business venture, which was, again, mutually beneficial for the parties involved. Farm equipment in this sense played a dual role: it provided an opportunity to build relationships and a way to earn extra money for those who needed it, but the business relationship was secondary to the personal relationship.

Just as the farmers needed each other to maximize their success, each person in a household contributed to keeping the family and farm running. Family cooperation and conflict were common themes throughout the narratives I collected. Women played an integral part in the farming community, as did children. As was common in other parts of Utah, the mother typically stayed in the home caring for younger children, cooking, cleaning, and often doing gardening or other subsistence farming tasks. Mothers had to work hard in order to provide for the family. 47

Lex Baer said of his mother, Sarah Hyer Baer, “She did everything. She was a great cook. She bottled, of course, all kinds of fruit. She helped with the selling of the fruit. She just took care of home.” Sarah sold fruit to people who came to the Baer home to buy it, while her husband took charge of peddling the fruit to local grocery stores. Other families had similar arrangements. Lex continued, “We’d always have a lot of fruit at home and she would sell that, and she bottled hundreds of bottles of fruit. Very good.

A garden was a typical addition to most yards during this time. Here, Mrs. Marion E. Cox stands in the large home garden she built as part of her home management plan. Cache County, Utah, 1940. Russell Lee, photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF34-014112-D.

She was a very good cook.” 48 Although this was a typical response from children about their mothers or the women they worked with on the farms, at least two of the households I talked to had mothers who had full-time jobs out of necessity. Here, as in other rural areas, women’s roles in contributing to the household were not confined to the home but “also extended to areas immediately surrounding the house.” 49

The garden is an example of a space where gender norms were more flexible, where household tasks met the physical labor of the field. Although the garden traditionally fell within a woman’s domain, in rural Providence, there seemed to be no specific gender assigned to that space. Father or mother could be in charge of it, while sons or daughters helped maintain it. Sarah Baer grew up on a dairy farm, so she could milk faster than the rest of the family. Accordingly, Sarah often helped with the milking, but she did not take part in the harvesting or planting. This extended into the garden area as well. “We had a garden, but usually she didn’t do the garden. Usually it was me, my dad and so on,” said Lex about his mother’s role. 50 Joan Lofthouse’s father and mother “did grow a large garden. . . . Actually, it was my father that grew them. I mean, [mother] helped, but he was the one that loved the garden.” 51 Here it was a matter of personal choice and passion.

Another woman recounted a memory of her mother’s role in the gardening, using the pronoun they in way that suggested that neither parent was necessarily in charge. She recalled that every year her parents “planted a big garden. I remember that. . . . They planted everything. We had all kinds of vegetables. And one thing I remember is they would plant the little green onions. And I remember my mother going out there and crawling along the ground on her hands and knees pulling the weeds out of those little tiny green onions.” Her mother also “canned the produce for winter and stored the potatoes” so they would have food ready for winter. 52

The garden itself could often be a space where anyone participated, making it more of a family affair. The garden harvest was usually used by the mother in bottling and food storage, its result a product of physical labor that sustained the family, as did men’s work outside of the home. 53 The hard work in the garden and in the kitchen after the harvest were essential in keeping the family fed throughout the winter when work and food were scarce. The canned preserves also served as a treat when fresh fruit was not available.

The roles of children—daughters and sons— on the farms were also fluid, confusing established gender roles. The amount of work done in the fields outside often depended on birth order for both males and females. Art Bitters, for example, did not spend as much time working with berries as Wes Bitters did because he was younger, but he did help with apples as he got older. “When I was about ten, eleven, twelve that was when they were doing a lot of the fruit growing. They’d get up about six and start. Or earlier, five or six. As soon as daylight started. And they’d pick until they got finished about noon. . . . So I would just goof around while [they worked],” Art recalled. But he made it clear that he was contributing while at home, doing the things his mother might do if she were there. Art would “mow the lawn, . . . weed the garden, just stuff around the house. It wasn’t city living. It was all country, so everybody kind of did a little something around the farm related to the farm.” 54

The reverse was true for Joan Lofthouse as a younger daughter in her family. “We worked hard growing up. Just because that’s what you done to survive as families. And I didn’t think much about it,” she said. “I was the fourth girl in our family, and by then my father had decided he needed help outside instead of all of us doing dishes. So me and one of my other sisters were outside, and consequently we learned to love the outdoors. The others didn’t. They didn’t want to get their fingers dirty. [Laughs].” The comments of Joan Lofthouse and Art Bitters illustrate that although family obligations took precedence, children had some choice in their level of participation and individual situations mattered more than traditions. 55

The farmers on the Providence bench got to know each other to varying degrees through work and socializing. These relationships mattered as much as exchanges of work and goods in building and sustaining the rural community and led to closer cooperation and exchange. In my interviews, there was the sense that work was work, but people also formed friendships with each other and had a good laugh when taking a break. For example, most of my interviewees remembered Royal Gessel as “a real jolly kind of guy,” “kind of a character.” 56 He was a part of all of their lives because of his personality and the location of his farm. Location was, of course, influential in the relationships the farmers created with each other. “The Jensen kids worked a lot on their farm over there. But their dad was usually there,” said Shayne Mathews. “He worked part-time too, but he was home a lot and helped them on the farm. They’re the ones I associated the most with because they were about a quarter mile from us and farming all the time.” 57

Mathews’s friendship with the Jensen family extended beyond working in the fields. Because the county did not have busses to take the students on the bench to school, the neighbors offered rides to each other. “For a long time it was Sister Heckmann, Mrs. Heckmann, that lived across from us,” Mathews recalled. “They had a car that they’d pick us up and take us to school in. And then Floyd Newbold had a little Jeep Wagoneer and we rode in that. He picked up the high school kids. And grade school too, a lot, so it was either Heckmanns or Newbolds that were picking us up. So, the kids, we were all riding those little busses and stuff together.” 58 In this sense, the cooperative spirit extended beyond the fields into day-to-day life and sociality. Likewise, one woman, who I will call Mary, as she preferred to remain anonymous, remembered that although Floyd Newbold had a reputation “for being Scotch” (or stingy), he was a good person, as demonstrated by the sacrifice of his time and money every day during the school year. 59

Mary, whose family lived in town, described the intimacy shared among the women on the bench: “My family was friends with the other farmers on the bench. . . . In fact, my mother was in a little club with all those ladies up on the bench that had farms.” The adults in these families would get together regularly, “maybe once a month and have a dinner together. . . . And they were all wonderful cooks. Oh! Wonderful cooks! They all raised big gardens . . . I don’t recall that any of the women in that group ever worked out of their home. I think they were homemakers, every one of them.” These kinds of clubs were common in rural areas and took on many forms. In this case, the members of the group gathered for dinner mostly during the colder winter months rather than during the busy planting and harvesting seasons. Each woman hosted in her turn, and the children were never invited. These dinners were big affairs for the families, and her parents enjoyed the occasions immensely. Mary remembered all the women gathered around in the kitchen, sharing news about their families. “Well, I’m pregnant,” they would say. These club meetings and dinners were times when the farmers and their wives could get together and celebrate, taking it easy when the farm required less attention. Because of the wives’ association, they could share in the bounty that they had all worked hard to achieve. 60

The women’s relationships with each other extended beyond cooking and eating together to other forms of exchange that “flowed from [the] women’s visiting and work patterns,” such as caring for children and making clothing. 61 Around 1947, a few of the mothers, including Ona Newbold and Rhetta Jensen, decided to have their daughters all enroll in dance classes together, sharing the carpooling duties among themselves. The care for each other’s daughters continued later in life, as Mary remembered in the following way: “All of those mothers, when they would have a daughter get married, then all the women would get together and quilt a quilt for that daughter.” This pattern continued for several years until she was married. “I got married in the middle of the summer and they came to my mother and said, ‘We can’t quilt in the summer. We just can’t make a quilt.’” 62 Instead of sewing a quilt for her, they pooled their money together and bought her a nice set of china. Her mother and father did not socialize with this group as much once their children had left home, but some of the friendships on the bench remained strong throughout these people’s lives.

A July 1940 picture by Russell Lee, likely depicting women in Box Elder County, Utah, tacking a quilt to be used by a sheepherder. Women on the Providence bench often banded together to enjoy each other’s company and care for each other’s children by, among other things, quilting. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USF33-012855-M1.

Shayne Mathews also remembered his parents associating with their neighbors, along with a few couples from in town. “As a matter fact,” he said, “Mom, up until the day she died, was really good friends with Rhetta Jensen that lived up there and Opal Naylor and some of the other neighbors up there.” 63 The feeling of camaraderie was obviously not limited to the men, who felt connected by their work, but existed among their families as well.

Despite any tensions that might have occurred among farm families on the bench due to competition for water or sales, the shared experiences of growing fruit on the Providence bench connected and unified them. They had built up an enclave of support and mutual understanding both in their families and as a group, which enriched their lives and helped them through difficult periods. Yet as the twentieth century progressed, blighted crops and other disasters made Providence’s small farming operations less profitable. Meanwhile, the value of the farmland only increased. There is no surprise, then, that as each farmer sold his share of the land when agricultural production was declining and the land values rising, that the bonds of community also started breaking down. The face of the Providence bench, now covered in homes, is drastically altered from the midcentury years of fruit farming. Those subdivisions are a reflection not only of the changes in local economy but also of the disintegration of the farming families’ community ties.

Web Extra

At history.utah.gov, we feature more photographs from the series taken by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration.

Notes

1 F. Ross Peterson, A History of Cache County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Cache County Commission, 1997), 158–62, 279, 283–91, 304; see also Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Brian Q. Cannon, “Introduction,” in Life and Land: The Farm Security Administration Photographers in Utah, 1936– 1941, ed. Peter S. Briggs (Logan: Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and Utah State University Press, 1988), 3; and Nancy K. Berlage, Farmers Helping Farmers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914–1935 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016).

2 Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), 56.

3 Henry Glassie, “Folklore and History,” Minnesota History 50, no. 5 (Spring 1987): 188, 191 (qtn).

4 Robert McCarl, “Occupational Folklore,” in Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, ed. Elliott Oring (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1986), 71.

5 Melissa Walker, “Narrative Themes in Oral Histories of Farming Folk,” Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 347.

6 Michael Hoberman, Yankee Moderns: Folk Regional Identity in the Sawmill Valley of Western Massachusetts, 1890–1920 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), xviii.

7 D. W. Meinig, “The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies in the Geography of the American West, 1847–1964,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55, no. 2 (June 1965): 191–220.

8 See Brock Cheney, Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2012), 2–3, for a pioneer-era example of the interplay between competition and cooperation.

9 Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People (Logan, UT: Herald Journal Printing, 1949), 40– 41.

10 Joan Lofthouse and Boyd Lofthouse, interview by Amy Howard, March 6, 2013, Logan, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter MCUSU).

11 Shayne Mathews, interview by Amy Howard, October 21, 2013, Petersboro, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

12 Barre Toelken, “The Folklore of Water in the Mormon West,” Northwest Folklore 2 (Spring 1989): 13–14.

13 Providence History Committee, “Providence City Oral History Project, 2005–2008,” FOLK COLL 53, Special Collections and Archives, MCUSU; Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People; Providence History Committee, Providence and Her People, 2nd ed. (Providence, UT: K. W. Watkins, 1974); 2008; Robert Parson, Providence and Her People, Vol. 3 (Providence, UT: Exemplar Press, 2009).

14 Peterson and Cannon, Awkward State of Utah, 210, 211 (qtn.), 214–28, 397n5; Peterson, History of Cache County, 57–60, 83–84, 169–71, 322–28; George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation, with Special Reference to Early Utah Conditions (New York: Macmillan, 1920); John Bennion, “Water Law on the Eve of Statehood: Israel Bennion and a Conflict in Vernon, 1893–1896,” Utah Historical Quarterly 82, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 289–305; Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People, 25–26. As F. Ross Peterson put it, “water control in Cache County is a microcosm of the evolution of irrigation in the West.” Peterson, History of Cache County, 84.

15 Art Bitters, interview by Amy Howard, February 8, 2013, Centerville, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

16 Art Bitters, interview.

17 Lex A. Baer, interview by Amy Howard, February 11, 2013, Providence, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

18 Toelken, “The Folklore of Water in the Mormon West,” 13.

19 Art Bitters, interview.

20 Mathews, interview.

21 Parson, Providence and Her People, 23–24.

22 For context about the ups and downs Utah’s farmers faced in the decades preceding this study, see Charles S. Peterson and Brian Q. Cannon, The Awkward State of Utah: Coming of Age in the Nation, 1896–1945 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and University of Utah Press, 2015), 63–64, 232, 266, 274, 330; and Brian Q. Cannon, “Struggle against Great Odds: Challenges in Utah’s Agricultural Areas, 1925–1939,” Utah Historical Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 308–27.

23 Eloise Baer Toolson, interview by Amy Howard, March 8, 2013, Smithfield, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

24 Wes Bitters, interview by Amy Howard, January 28, 2013, Providence, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

25 Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People, 156–57.

26 Wes Bitters, interview. The Capitol Theatre is now the Ellen Eccles Theatre.

27 Harvey Mohr, interview by Amy Howard, February 13, 2013, Nibley, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

28 Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People, 156–57.

29 “California Agriculture Timeline,” California Agriculture 50, no. 6 (1996): 22–25.

30 Mathews, interview. See Peterson, A History of Cache County, 304–11, for the growth and decline of agricultural processing plants in Cache Valley from the 1910s to the 1990s.

31 Mathews, interview.

32 Mohr, interview.

33 Wes Bitters, interview.

34 Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 59–62

35 Cheney, Plain but Wholesome, 27 (qtn.), 28; Ronald G. Watt, The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: First British Convert, Scribe for Zion (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), 196–204; see also Mark Thomas, “Grafts from a Lost Orchard,” Utah Historical Quarterly 74, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 231–40.

36 Baer, interview; see also Historical Society of Providence, Providence and Her People, 155.

37 Ivan “Ike” Christensen, interview by Amy Howard, February 8, 2013, Providence, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

38 Art Bitters, interview.

39 Mohr, interview; Baer, interview; Wes Bitters, interview.

40 Mathews, interview. For contemporary descriptions and illustrations of grain binders and combine harvesters, see “Labor Costs Reduced and Farm Efficiency Greatly Increased with Improved Mechanical Developments,” North Cache News (Smithfield, UT), September 14, 1945, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Culture of Oats in the Western States, Farmers’ Bulletin No. 2134 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959), 9–11.

41 Lofthouse and Lofthouse, interview; see also Walker, “Narrative Themes,” 345–46.

42 Baer, interview.

43 Mathews, interview.

44 Mathews, interview.

45 Mohr, interview.

46 Mohr, interview.

47 Brian Q. Cannon, “The Best Years of Their Lives? Wives and Mothers on Western Homesteads in the Postwar Years,” Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 452, 461–63; Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 17–39.

48 Baer, interview (qtn.); 1940 U.S. Census, Providence, Providence Election Precinct, Cache County, Utah, family 122, line 69, LaVon A. Baer, digital image, accessed January 25, 2019, familysearch.org.

49 Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 19.

50 Baer, interview; see also Toolson, interview; Clotille Baer Liechty, interview by Amy Howard, March 5, 2013, Logan, Utah, recording and partial transcript, Fife Folklore Archives, MCUSU.

51 Lofthouse and Lofthouse, interview; see also Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 19

52 Former fruit picker (name withheld), interview by Amy Howard, March 4, 2013, recording and partial transcription in possession of the author.

53 Cannon, “The Best Years of Their Lives?,” 462.

54 Art Bitters, interview.

55 Lofthouse and Lofthouse, interview; see also Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 20–21, 240.

56 Mathews, interview; Mohr, interview; Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 40–54.

57 Mathews, interview.

58 Mathews, interview.

59 Former fruit picker, interview.

60 Former fruit picker, interview.

61 Neth, Preserving the Family Farm, 55

62 Former fruit picker, interview.

63 Mathews, interview.