I'm studying what farming was like in Worcester in the middle of the 1900's. I interviewed George Richardson, Sr. and his sister, Pauline Richardson Utton.
George and Pauline grew up on a farm near the end of Minister Brook Road. Their farm was high on a hillside overlooking the valley.
George still lives at that farm. George and Pauline had a lot of old photographs that helped me imagine what it was like growing up on a farm back then.
Here are Pauline and George as children, in front of their farmhouse.
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Pauline told me that when she was a kid, there was a 4-H Club, and they raised pigs and cows, and also won ribbons. She was the only girl in 4-H, and this picture shows her 4-H group
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The Richardsons grew a lot of the food they needed. George said they grew from 100 to 500 bushels of potatoes each year.
Here we can see George and Pauline with their parents, Paul and Kate.
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The seven potatoes in this picture weighed a total of 14 pounds, or an average of 2 pounds per potato!
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Back then on farms they used "horsepower" to cut wood. This picture shows the horse-powered saw at Richardsons' farm. The horses walked on a treadmill, and that turned the belt that powered the saw blade.
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They would log in the winter with a team of horses. This picture shows Paul, George and Pauline's father, with his team.
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By spring they would have huge piles of logs ready for sawing.
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George Richardson said they had 19 or 20 cows that they milked by hand, twice a day! He brought some interesting pictures to show about haying when he was growing up, and how he hays today. The first pictures show the machines they used for haying before the 1950's, when they got a tractor. All the early machines were driven by "horse power."
George also showed me a picture of the horse-drawn wagon they used to ride to the village. George's daughters are in it. This picture is from 1954.
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This picture shows a mowing machine. As the wheels turned, the blades moved and cut the grass. Then they would have to turn the hay by hand, to let it dry in the sun.
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This picture shows a machine that is called a "horse rake," or a "hay rake." There was a lever you pulled to get it to dump the hay in piles.
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This picture shows the Richardson family loading the hay. They all worked together.
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Here we can see how they put the hay into the loft in the barn. They used a "hay fork," that grabbed a big load of hay from the wagon. Horses were hooked up on the other side of the barn, and they lifted the load using pulleys.
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As you can see, all of these machines were powered by horses, and the people had to do a lot of work by hand. Now we have machines with engines, and now we don't use "horse power." George's first picture of his modern haying methods shows a "hay tedder" that spreads the hay out to dry.
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Next they use the "side rake" that puts hay in rows.
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This picture shows George in the tractor pulling the baler, which automatically puts the hay into tight bales.
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All the baled hay in the field, ready for loading.
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After loading the bales on a trailer and bringing them in from the field, George uses a conveyor belt to move the hay into the loft in the barn.
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 George says it's a lot easier bringing in the hay now than it used to be! He told me one story from the horse-power days. He remembered a time when he and his wife went out to the field to turn the cut hay, and as they finished, it rained. They had to go back and turn all the hay again the next day, but it rained again. This happened for three or four days in a row! Finally they turned and dried just enough hay to bring in on that day, then waited till the next day to do another section, and so on. They finally got all the hay in. That must have been really hard, but now he laughs about it!
 I want to thank George and Pauline for helping me on this report. Thanks!
Pauline Richardson Utton and her brother, George Richardson, with George's granddaughter, Tanya, after an interview in our classroom with Ethan T., Brett F. & Chianna C. |
