Four Farmer Oral Histories
Blue Slope Country Museum held an oral history activity called Stew and Stories on April 8, 2017. Four South-Eastern Connecticut farmers joined in on the conversation moderated by Carolyn Stearns with prewritten questions. The questions are included in the transcript.
Transcribed notes taken on that afternoon by Anne Staebner
Ernest Staebner - semi-retired from Blue Slope Farm (dairy) in Franklin
Oliver Manning - retired from Manning Farm (dairy) in Lebanon
Joseph LoPresti - semi-retired from loPresti’s Farm (vegetable) in Preston
Tony Harasimowitz - from Colchester
Carolyn Stearns - Moderator
Carolyn Stearns
- Give your name and birthdate or era and where you grew up
Oliver Manning
- I have been in Lebanon 98% of my life.
Joseph LoPresti
- I’m Farmer Joe. I live in the “Capitol of The World” I have 2 older brothers and a sister in the farm house. I spent one month in California in 1961.
Ernest Staebner
- I was born in Mansfield, CT in 1931 on April 21. I have lived in Chaplain, Coventry. My father got a state job as a milk inspector so we lived in Orange, CT. Then we found this place here.
Carolyn Stearns
- We are heading into a growing season. What is one of your favorite memories?
Ernest Staebner
-Back in 1934, my father had a team of horses. I was about 4 years old picking up earthworms behind the horses with a green team. That was my favorite activity. When the horses turned around, they straddled me and plowed me under. I was not hurt.
Corn is planted the first of May or a little later.
Joseph LoPresti
- 1938 Hurricane my two bothers and uncle never made it home. They were at school about 2 miles as the crow flies. I had just turned 5 years old and my sister was 4 years old. We were looking out the window. My father picked me up and down the cellar we went. My mother took my sister. When the storm was over the sunshine came out with no rain.
My two brothers and uncle arrived home. It took 3 days with a cross out saw to cut up the trees.
Oliver Manning
- My mother was in a sanitarium for some time. I worked at my brother Steve’s. My mother was on Kick Hill. I also stayed with Eric who had chicken and cows. During the 1938 Hurricane I was putting the chickens in the coop because they were being picked up in the wind. A tree came down and went all over the yard. It took many days to clean it all up.
Carolyn Stearns
- Tell us about sharing labor and helping hands.
Ernest Staebner
-Neighbors.
Everyone was a neighbor even if they were 10 miles away. I would help the neighbors’ farm with their cows and then they would help me.
In January on a Sunday noontime we would go to a brook or spring, sit on the ground that was dry and eat canned chicken and biscuits.
Joseph LoPresti
- We had a horse and many chickens. We’d split wood for the wood stove before the bus came. We had enough food to eat.
We’d borrow the neighbor’s horse and they would borrow our horse.
Ernest Staebner
- We moved here in 1940 with no electricity until 1945. We used a lantern to go to the barn with and one in the house. For years nothing changed for about 100 years. After the war and in 1945 tractors came in. I still have three horses here.
Some day we put hay in. My father mowed hay at 3 in the morning when it got too hot he stopped.
Oliver Manning
- My first job on the farm was using a damp rake at 10 years old. In 1930’s my dad bought a tractor. We’d run the tractor to blow the silo. First you had to plow the land with horses about 3 acres a day. Then you pulled a harrow which was worse than a plow for the horses. Old brother used sticks and chains on it to mark the corn. You’d cultivate the corn ahead of the weeds. You cut the corn by hand. Dump carts run the corn through the cutter only put in 4 stalks at a time and then blow it into the silo. Cars would run the belt for silo. You’d use more than one car to fill the silo faster.
Ernest Staebner
- We cut corn by hand. There were lots of accidents. A man would be up in the silo. We played a prank and blew tomatoes into the cutter and up the silo. The guy in the silo would think someone had gotten into the cutter.
Joseph LoPresti
- We did raise much field corn. Frank, ?son? and myself we sell corn. At quarter to five in the morning we would be in the field. We’d be done by 8:30. 180 bushels. 18-20 bushels an hour per each person. We’d eat raw corn for breakfast.
We broke three plow points so we harrowed one year. I was 11 years old driving and they didn’t think any one was driving cause they couldn’t see me. They would get a shock.
Oliver Manning
- Frank Byteszie (spelling?) put his wife in the silo to level the silage. She had to get down on to level ground 10-15 feet above and she was afraid of heights. Corn took a lot of time. To fill a 10 by 20 silo was a good days work. We’d get 6-8 fellows from neighbor farms to help then go on to the next field. There were few upright silos. I built a trench silo that people said would never work. More than once a day to get silage in a 100 pound bag.
We’d get grain from Eastern States and get a check or loan to get grain like every 2 to 3 weeks. Definitely not every week. We had 6 cows.
Ernest Staebner
- Five to ten acres of corn we ground that corn up. The herds were a lot smaller like 18 cows milked by had without electricity. I started at 6 years old milking a cow by hand. We’d feed them corn and silage and grains. Cost was very minimal.
My father worked on the town work crew. $2.50 per week or day.
Joseph LoPresti
- My brother bought a 1947 Cub tractor. And a 1948 planter junior we are still using today.
A person would jog up and down with the hoe to get the fertilizer into the ground and not burn the roots. My brother said look no more warts. Then I did it and had no more warts. From then on I put my hand directly into the fertilizer and I had no more warts.
Carolyn Stearns
- Anybody had oxen?
Oliver Manning
- No oxen
Joseph LoPresti
- No oxen
Ernest Staebner
- No oxen but steers. One of our boys did but did not really work them so they got too big. We had horses then tractors.
Carolyn Stearns
- Food preservation was important to the family and possibly customers.
Oliver Manning
- Canned food was boiled and rubber seal jars. Carrots and potatoes we put on the dirt cellar bottom.
Ernest Staebner
- My mother did a lot canning – chicken and pork. Salt pork was put in a crock and put lard over them. Eggs were in a salt water jar. She’d put up 100 jars of beans. Beef was butchered and hung in the uninsulated attic. Take the green mold off and it was tenderized. Cut a slab off and cook it.
Joseph LoPresti
- In early 1944 we built a green house. We cut hemlocks 2 by 4 and put in a glass green house. We tip the windows up. We put in horse manure, and then soil to keep the plants from freezing. So you could get a head start ahead of the market and get a better price.
Oliver Manning
- We shipped milk in 40 quart cans. My brother shipped 10 gallon cans by train to Providence. We hauled milk. It’s a long way to Baltic in the snow with a team of horses.
Ernest Staebner
- We had gravity water from the top of the hill to the milk room. We went to an ice house. We’d take the old car with 300 pound block of ice and split into two. A half would go into the water with milk cans and a half would go to the ice box. It would last about two days in the heat. Or we put milk cans in the water in the spring.
During school at noon time we’d go swimming in the heat of the summer and go skinny dipping and get back to school on time. Kahn’s pond was an ice pond also.
On a cloudy day at school with no electricity we told the school teacher we couldn’t read so she sent us all home. When we got home, the sun came out but we didn’t go back to school.
Joseph LoPresti
- We had ice all the time. The ice house was insulated with sawdust or hay. They built the first snow plow with a team of horses using a V-plow. We used shredded (?) back shoes on the horses for ice.
Ernest Staebner
- We needed to go back through the snow with horses making passes a few times before the road was clear.
Oliver Manning
- We hand shoveled the top of ten foot drifts on Kickhill Road and it was filled up with six feet of snow that year with the bad winter. We never plowed the snow because it just snowed and snowed.
Dick Terrick from the audience- We peddled milk home to home.
Joseph LoPresti
- My father was born in Sicily came to the New York in 1917. My mother was from Naples. I don’t know how they met - probably in New York. My grandmother bought the farm in 1929. I’m 83.
Carolyn Stearns
- Tell us about school
Ernest Staebner
- The Academy was seven miles away. The elementary school was a mile away. There was a fellow in charge of the ladies driving the school children. He told the lady drivers not to stop the car when they picked up the children, just slow down to save the clutch. So we had to jump out of the car and jump into the car while it was slowly moving.
Oliver Manning
- I was ten years old before I found out you were suppose to wear swimming trunks while swimming.
Ernest Staebner
- We went sledding from the top of the hill all the way down to the bottom. My mother hung a lantern on the clothesline to come home from ice skating.
Joseph LoPresti
- I did not like school like Ernie.
Ernest Staebner
- I did graduate.
Joseph LoPresti
- We got picked up at 6:35 and school was like two miles away. I got home a twenty-five minutes after four. My parents bought us bicycles. The school was fifteen minutes away then we came home to set out plant and cover the lettuce with soil. We would work three hours straight. John and Paul each could pick over 100 baskets of tomatoes. The other workers could only pick 50 baskets. We would cross cultivate 45 degrees one way and 90 degrees another way. (?I don’t know for what vegetable)
Carolyn Stearns
- WWII brought ration stamps like not getting rubber. How did that affect the farm?
Oliver Manning
- Sugar was the biggest ration. My sister gave us her sugar ration. I went to New Haven for a physical. We didn’t have to go in to the war. My brother Norman went in because he was in New York. My other brother went to China. After the first coupler of years, farmers were exempt.
My father bought a farm for eight cows and then expanded to twelve cows. Most people has six cows and that was a lot.
Joseph LoPresti
- WWII persons raised in the United States, but my parents were born in Italy. FBI took all the guns because my brother was born in United States but raised in Italy. We got all back except one.
Ernest Staebner
- In school we saw wagons filled with sugar. Two black cars came the school and arrested all the bootleggers. It was about three miles from us. 1942-1943.
Oliver Manning
- My nineteen old uncle was shot for bootlegging.
Tony Harasimowitz
- I live by Red Cedar Lake in Colchester. We had a survival farm with a few cows, pigs, chickens. In 1948 we got electricity and paved roads.
My mother crank started a washing machine. Usually the boys had to start it. We would carry buckets of water from the well. We all worked hard and together.
We would ice fish. I enjoyed growing up. It was a good life.
Oliver Manning
- Ice fishing. We cooled our milk with ice. The ice was 8 inches thick and sawdust was around the ice. One year it was too warm to make ice. We had to buy ice every day in Willimantic. Then the inspectors got fussier about cooling milk.
Carolyn Stearns
- How did you keep warm in the winter?
Joseph LoPresti
- I never did like cold weather. Vegetable and stuff to the market 18 years old to 25 and you stayed there. But later on it was a good thing. We were known for our tomatoes.
Ernest Staebner
- We never complained about it. We had three stoves in the house and I brought the wood into the house to keep it warm. My sisters did not do too much with the wood.
In school we had a wood stove for 18 or 20 kids in the school. We got paid 10 cents a day to take care of the stove and the boys would take turns taking care of the stove. It was a game to get the stove pipe red hot.
We spread out manure every day. It was cold up there on the hill and was glad to come back where it was warm.
Joseph LoPresti
- It was a half mile to the woods and we used a crosscut saw to cut the wood. We’d drink water from the brook. We’d strip down because we got too hot working. We used about 8 to 10 cord a year.
Ernest Staebner
- We drank out of all the springs and brooks. We had neighbors.
Tony Harasimowitz
- We split wood with black powder. My father saw it in a catalog. You drilled a hole in the wood and filled it with black powder. Then light a fuse and it would split the log into pieces. We had a 25 pound keg of black powder.
Joseph LoPresti
- We grew tomatoes in different fields for good tomatoes. We used to add lime; now we use chicken manure. We were known for our tomatoes.
We grew twelve acres, 42,000 tomatoes. We started at 3:45AM and go to Moosup, Norwich, and New London and then they would go on ships. We were in Westerly by 7:45 AM. I made it.
Oliver Manning
- Going to school in all nine grades in one school. I went to school before I was in kindergarten. I was not a good student. I’m 92 years old. My dad worked off and on at CLP in Montville. I crossed the pasture if it got too muddy. I’d take the milk with my dad to a state road. This was my time with my dad when I was about 3 or 4 years old.
Carolyn Stearns
- What about family events?
Oliver Manning
- The next house had a house fire. A 13 year old boy came and told us and we put the fire out with a bucket brigade.
Ernest Staebner
- In my bedroom was the chimney. I could see the flames going up and my bed was near the chimney so my feet were warm.
Joseph LoPresti
- 1978 we had a fire in the workshop. A spark landed on cardboard. In 1979 we moved the gas tanks across the street. We got the cars out but the new welders, tires, saddle house were lost. The wind was blowing so the gas tanks didn’t go up.
Audience (Dick Terrick’s friend)
- We had a wood stove in the kitchen and had a chimney fire. My mother heard the roar. She put a box of Epson Salt on it. She put the whole box in and puff the fire was out. She Called the Yantic Fire Department and they came.
Carolyn Stearns
- Elaborate on outdoor to indoor plumbing.
Oliver Manning
- Dad moved the farm from Indiana and moved it to Connecticut. In Indiana we had indoor plumbing. In Connecticut we put in indoor plumbing with a gas engine.
Tony Harasimowitz
- When we got electricity we got indoor plumbing at the same time. We had a two seater and didn’t sit for too long.
Ernest Staebner
- We had an outhouse a long ways from the house. It was a cold trip to the outhouse. In October around Halloween, the boys in the back of the outhouse would say, “Hey lady move over we are working down there.”
Joseph LoPresti
- In 1951 or 1952 we got a refrigerator. When it snowed we needed to keep shoveling the path to the outhouse.
Carolyn Stearns
- What kind of pranks did you play?
Oliver Manning
- Someone would sit in the outhouse and tip it over with the door down on Halloween.
Joseph LoPresti
- On Halloween, we would dump barrels of water over.
We would dive into the pond after spraying with DDT on the vegetables.
Carolyn Stearns
- There are a few items on the table. Could you tell us about them?
Ernest Staebner
- This is a traveler for measuring wagon wheels. A candle holder and hog scraper. Cards for wool. Tether for a cow or horse. Window sash plane. Hatchel for flax.
Joseph LoPresti
- We had a cow bell to come for lunch or supper. We worked until 10:30 to wipe and sort tomatoes and pack them.
Anne Staebner
- My mother’s mother, my grandmother had measuring cups that were not standard to everyone else’s cups. When my mother wanted a recipe she wrote down what her mother did. When she got home the baked item did not turn out well. The next time she went to visit her in Vermont she brought her own measuring cups so she could get the present day proper measurements. Someone had made my grandmother’s measuring cups but not everything was standardized.
Katerina Woronik
- People used rules of thumb.
Joseph LoPresti
- A lot depended where you were when you planted. Usually the first week of May you could start to plant outside.
Carolyn Stearns
- Did you see waste or maintenance when things became mechanized?
Joseph LoPresti
- When we have an excess of yellow squash, zucchini, small tomatoes we give them to the soup kitchen. Our neighbor had pigs so we also gave squash to their pigs and we got half a pig.
Ernest Staebner
- We waste too much today. We used to take scrap boards and make something. Now the cost is cheaper for new than to rebuild.
Oliver Manning
- Nothing got wasted. I was the youngest of nine. Dad was an electrical engineer and passed away when I was 6 or 7 years old. A Model T Ford with eight people traveled from Indiana to Lebanon.
Carolyn Stearns
- Tell us about extra farm workers.
Oliver Manning
- We had visitors from Africa and other countries. Those from Holland did not know what a hill was.
Joseph LoPresti
- Jamaican workers were at the neighbors and they worked for us some times. We ran. My brothers and me so we got ready for baseball. We ran between the fields. I couldn’t hit the ball too well, but I could run.
Ernest Staebner
- We worked neatly. During haying we took a pitch fork and start at the front of the wagon, and then the sides on the wagon moving it to the middle of the wagon to level it and stomp it down so it work look nice. We stacked the hay outside so it looked neat and had a round stack of hay. Shocks of corn looked neat. Plowed fields, fence rows clean, wood pile all neat.
Joseph LoPresti
- My brother Paul could pick beans fast. 15 minutes he had half a bushel. In a half hour, a full bushel. We picked up stones with dump trucks and load them into the pay-loader.
Carolyn Stearns
- Tell us about farm programs.
Oliver Manning
- County Agents came around and convinced my older brother to go to 4-H Camp. I never went. We peddled eggs to Willimantic. We never made any extra trips.
Joseph LoPresti
- Russ Hibbard, County Agent, would get posts on blights, bugs, pests. He would warn us what was going on in other states so we would be prepared. He took rat poison to stay alive.
Carolyn Stearns
- What do you miss the most of 50 years ago?
Oliver Manning
- Not being able to play ball. Not seeing so good now. I enjoy what I’m doing now.
Ernest Staebner
- Invasive plants. We have a cucumber vine now that smothers corn plants. And bittersweet.
Carolyn Stearns
- Did you hunt on your farm?
Ernest Staebner
- We have hunters here now: coyotes, deer, goose. No bears here. Yes bobcat and maybe mountain lion.
Joseph LoPresti
- We used bows and arrows to hunt deer and turkeys. The turkeys would make holes in the watermelons.
Carolyn Stearns
- As for 4-H?
Oliver Manning
- My sister and older brother were in 4-H. We never saw deer as a kid. Probably others had hunted them.
Ernest Staebner
- My wife and I were 4-H members, our kids were in 4-H. My mother was one of the first leaders. My wife and I were leaders. If it wasn’t for 4-H we would have never met.
Joseph LoPresti
- I was in a tractor 4-H club. I donate to the 4-H Camp Auction now at the end of April 28 +29.
Ernest Staebner
- The 4-H Camp started in 1941 at Dolly Farm in Preston. It was $9. The only people who got paid were the nurse, director, and maybe the waterfront. In 1948 it moved to Franklin.
Joseph LoPresti
- I call square dances for 4-H and FFA.
Oliver Manning
- I was president of the New London County Farm Bureau. We bought the land from Tilford Cox for about $10,000. It was 17 acres originally and then we bought about 5 more acres.
Carolyn Stearns
- Anyone have anything else to add?
Dick Terrick
- We had a poultry/chicken farm. During the war we bought old buses and used them for coops. There was no lumber during the war. George Terrick was my dad.