"Time to Get Up" - and warm up! Day 1845: 5 Minute Freewrite
If getting up each day is hard, consider what our mothers and grandmas had to do upon waking. Most of us are not old enough to remember our pioneer-stock grandparents. Many of us are too young to have been raised by parents who were children during the Depression. The frugal habits ingrained in them were, in turn, deeply engrained in my sisters and me, in our 1960s-70s childhood.
But this. This was early 1980s, when I'd come home from college, and we'd wear hats and mittens at the kitchen table. Why? Why???
The furnace had broken down again. Dad didn't want to pay the repair bill or worse, the replacement cost (never mind that this furnace was ancient, rusty, loud, and complaining it wanted to retire).
Meanwhile Dad kept how many bins full of unsold grain because market prices were low again. How many thousands of bushels of corn and soybeans sat in bins, awaiting a market price he'd sell at? Not gonna go there. Not gonna tell how many decades passed. (Just, some of the bins exploded....)
No no no, my five minutes are running out! Quick, to the point:
How many times a day, not just upon waking,
did my mother lug two 5-gallon buckets of corn to burn in the basement? When home for the weekend, we'd take our turns, but Mom was the first one up each day, seven days a week. I swear to God, not one single time did we see our dad lugging these buckets from the barn to the house.
The corn-fire would die out in the night. Come morning, we'd wear mittens and hats to the breakfast table. I'm surprised the faucets didn't freeze up.
Dad must have gotten tired of having to lie in bed waiting for the house to warm up in the morning: eventually, he did relent and invest in a new furnace.
And for once, five minutes is ENOUGH for the topic of the day.
Painting by me, early 1980s
@# Thank you @mariannewest for the prompt and for all your time and attention to Freewritehouse!
Day 1845: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: time to get up
2021 photo by me, showing how the sides of a bin are splitting
For @myjob, here is a link to HOW TO GROW & HARVEST YOUR OWN ORGANIC CORN SYRUP - #satire alert!
And a video for those who've never witnessed harvesting (we say "combining") corn:
And now I'm off to see if anyone else here posted about mornings on a farm (up with the chickens at the crack of dawn; my husband's father was out feeding cattle before the sun came up).
Nice to see you! 🙋🏻♀️
I can relate! I grew up in a very similar
environment!
Have a Amazing Sunday!
Thanks @lesmann. We be survivors, eh?
Yes we are @carolkean !
Very Good to see You on here, it has been awhile,
Take Care and Stay Safe!
Have an Amazing Week!
🙋🏻♀️✨🌄✨🙋🏻♀️
Thanks, @lesmann, you too! 🌄✨
Thank You Too!
🙋🏻♀️✨🌄✨🙋🏻♀️
Oh dear. I can hit "edit" and fix the typos, or just leave 'em:
Ohhhh the chaos, the crippling chaos and drama, of family.
Those hermits on the mountaintops, those nuns in convents and monks in monasteries, knew a thing or two we daughters/sisters/mothers did not.
Families can be such a trial that I marvel how any of us escape them with our sanity intact...or do we?
I did once consider nunhood, it sounded such a good deal. Bed, board, and a lot of tranquility in return for a few aul prayers...then I grew up.
I know you're having a very rough time of it and I hope that your writing at least provides some emotional release for you.
LOL, being a nun or priest, these days, does sound like a good gig! Those young priests, especially, get wined and dined and fussed over and appreciated and loved. Here in the Midwest, and probably even more so in predominantly Catholic cultures.
Thanks for the kind thoughts! It did feel good to write a wee bit today....
I am a Florida girl so forgive me, I have never heard of burning corn, or did you mean coal?
Oh, I meant corn!
Field corn, the corn that truckers haul to factories for Corn Flakes and corn syrup and all that.
I didn't have photos at hand. Maybe I should have found something online .....
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Your welcome, did your house smell like cornbread was baking?
No, our dad used dirty corn, a lot of the time, which could explain my ruined sinuses (super sensitive to mildew). The burning corn didn't smell like popcorn or cornbread.
That is odd that it did not smell like corn cooking.
Relatable. A bit though.
Raised by the second generation after colonisation and the conditioning had me wondering how my mother survived her mother whilst reminding me to survive her.
Interestingly, religion felt like an escape only for me to grow up and see it as a brainwashing cult.
It isn't just the way they raise us: it's in our blood, literally; we are what our grandmothers ate!
You Are What Your Grandparents Ate: What You Need to Know About Nutrition, Experience, Epigenetics and the Origins of Chronic Disease
The religious indoctrination... I grew up in Bible Belt country, where all good families go to church and sing "I know that my Redeemer lives," but it's amazing how many good Christian fathers beat their kids (no, mine didn't physically harm us!), while the submissive wives/mothers made no effort to stop the beating that left welts and scars. I've only recently learned of one farm family from my childhood whose sons all scattered, alienated from the abusive father. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" - that scene in "Places in the Heart" where the widowed mother "knows" that she must whip her son because his dad isn't there to do it.....
Thanks for reading and commenting. You are very insightful.
This was very interesting, thank you for sending it. I would love to try and make my own corn syrup, but we do not have enough cold weather for it to work. They said to wait until temps dipped into the low 30s. That is the only time that I would wish for cold weather. (just so I could try this) I do grow sugar cane but I do not make anything from it, just eat it once in a while.
#satire alert - the corn syrup "news item" was a joke.
We have factories that make corn sweeteners, and the smell is NOT GOOD. I don't know why that is.
Well, I am a fisherman, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
A five minute freewrite and you didn't cheat! I thought I would never live to see the day. And why should you stop your brilliant blathering! I always read your freewrites to the end, and enjoy every word.
hahaha I love those tiny buckets!
Did you burn the whole plant, or just the ears? And would any wood burning furnace be able to burn corn? If we could go back to living that way, we would not have to worry about losing power or gas. Very interesting!
Some of the bins exploded?!
xo
Not the stalks, not the cobs, not the ears - just kernels! Bushels and bushels of golden corn, burning in the basement stove. Yeah, I know, what a waste. Corn was down to a dollar or two a bushel at the time.
It was a special corn-burning stove, as I recall. Or not a wood-only stove, that is.
Yes, some of the bins swelled with all the molding grain and split apart at the seams. I like to say "exploded" but it wasn't quite that dramatic. Just splitting at the seams, with grain spilling out.
I'm biting my tongue, so as not to publicly ridicule my dad, the one who called me "You idiot" from infancy, but did more idiotic things in his adult years than I had done... oh the list of colossal mistakes! Like that time he bought silver, the real metal, and buried it, and now even with a metal detector we cannot find it.... some stuff is just too painful, too set-your-teeth-on-edge stupid, to write about.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
I should do a new freewrite about these things! Or just a post, for homesteading.
Runs 24/7 ....? Only if my mom kept feeding it, way back when: