Oral History Documents a Life on the Farm
Published: Friday, January 29, 2021
This week, the Exchange debuts a new monthly series titled "The Way It Was." The three-part series reminisces upon rural life "back in the day" through the eyes of Larry Whinery, a retired Huntington County farmer. Whinery, who is 83, collaborated with his daughter and Exchange correspondent, Kim MacMillan, to write about the changes he's witnessed in farming.
Whinery is the youngest of five siblings, with 20 years spanning the oldest and the youngest. He participated in 4-H for 11 years and later became a 4-H leader. He coached the Huntington County livestock judging team and judged livestock projects at other county fairs. A graduate of Rock Creek Twp. High School in 1955, he attended Purdue University and graduated with a degree in animal husbandry in 1959. He also served in the U.S. Army after college. Whinery and his late wife of 60 years, Nancy, raised four children.
The following was written by Larry A. Whinery as told to Kim MacMillan.
On the day that I was born, May 11, 1937, Dad and my sister Norma, who was 12 and a half years my senior, were out planting the first hybrid seed corn on our farm using a team of horses and a two-row planter to cover the three-acre field. If the ground wasn't worked just right, one side of the planter would rise up out of the ground, so Norma sat on that row of the planter to weigh it down. Norma told me after I grew up that when they finished that field that day, Dad told her, "Now, let's go have a baby," and Mom gave birth to me that evening.
Chester E. Troyer, from La Fontaine, just west of here in Wabash County, was an early pioneer in hybrid seed corn production. He billed himself as the "World Corn King" and Dad and others learned about producing seed corn from him. We went on to raise Indiana Certified Seed until the 1980s at Loon Creek Valley Farms.
The country was on the way out of the Great Depression in 1937 and Europe was in World War II, although we didn't enter the war until Dec. 7, 1941, of course. After the U.S. entered the war everyone in our area had some connection to it whether they had a family member or neighbor serving in the military or had a job building equipment or were volunteering to support the cause.
Before I came along, and for many years after, we had a large chicken house; it was 100 feet long and either 22 or 24 feet wide and housed 1,000 laying hens in three sections. Dad always maintained that the chickens and eggs were what got our family through the Depression.
He ran a regular route to Fort Wayne to deliver eggs to a number of small neighborhood grocery stores in a black 1936 one-ton Chevy truck with a stock rack on it. He also hauled livestock from our farm, and for neighbors, to the Union Stockyards in Fort Wayne with that truck. Sometimes I would ride along with him when I was little. Later, when I was older we would pack eggs 30 dozen to a crate and sell them to Baumgartner Hatchery in Bluffton.
As with nearly all family farms of that time, we also had milk cows (Guernseys and probably a few Jerseys), beef cattle (Dad favored Shorthorn cattle, but I Iiked Angus), hogs and sheep (Dad purchased Shropshires from a farmer south of Marion). We planted oats, wheat, corn and clover and baled hay. It was quite common in the spring to turn the sows out in the woods and they would make nests and have piglets there.
During the 20 years that separated me from my oldest sister, Edith, a lot of things changed in a hurry on our farm. While using horses was the norm for Edith, and our next-in-line siblings, Gene and Norma, when they were little, I barely remember having horses on the farm. By the time I came along we had been using tractors for awhile; the first tractor I ever drove was a Farmall F20, but Dad's initial one was a Fordson and I think he had another one or two after that and before the F20. But we still used the horses for some things, so even after we got rid of ours we would have one or two cousins bring his team over when needed.
Another thing that was different for me was that we had electricity on the farm by the time I was born. Refrigeration was just beginning when I was little. In later life, Norma wrote down her memories of when electricity came to the farm. Before electric power arrived my parents had to use an icebox to keep things cold.
The community that I was born into was one of family farms, where the majority of the fathers did not have off-farm jobs and virtually none of the mothers had jobs outside the home. However, by the time I was out of high school 18 years later, that had changed and farmers who did not have another job in addition to farming were in the minority. Off-farm jobs, many of them created by the World War II manufacturing boom, helped this move along.
So, with all of that work on the farm, what did we do for fun? Going to the movies in town was a treat, of course. Family parties and reunions were a big thing. Playing games with cousins and a table full of delicious food were things to look forward to. In those days, extended family members usually lived within a few miles of one another or at least within a few counties.
Another bit of excitement on the farm was when a huckster would show up with his truck or van full of things for sale. These salesmen would go from house to house selling their wares, and they always brought a small gift for the lady of the house. Through our eyes as farm kids, these seemed like "magic" vehicles with many drawers full of wonderful things that the household might need such as gadgets and supplies for the kitchen.
Although most of the food we needed was produced on the farm, we still needed things such as spices and utensils. In those days a trip to Huntington would take up an entire day, so having the salesman come to the farm saved valuable time.
There were really three pillars of rural life as my siblings and I were growing up that provided social activities, need-based community support and a moral foundation: schools; churches, and lodges and clubs.
I attended the same township school, Rock Creek, from first-grade through my senior year, and had 13 students in my graduating class. Rock Creek was one of 13 township schools in the county plus the two schools in the city of Huntington; we added White's Institute, which was run by the Society of Friends in Wabash County, as a 16th school for basketball sectional play. Band concerts, school plays and sports provided entertainment and social time for us. The gymnasium would be full when we played a basketball game, although perhaps even today this hasn't changed so much in Indiana (except in this time of COVID-19).
Church was of paramount importance for religious and social events. Plum Tree United Church of Christ, a small country church where my parents met for the first time at a harvest party as young adults, continued to be the home church for Nancy and I and our children, until sadly it closed in 2018. Churches often had two services on the weekend, a prayer meeting during the week and youth activities, including summer bible school.
Lodges and clubs were another way to connect, exchange news and learn. Whether it was the local Masonic Lodge, the International Fellowship of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus, local conservation clubs, Grange meetings, Extension Homemaker clubs, or 4-H and FFA, they were all important and popular resources.
When I think about all the change my parents, who were born in the 1890s and passed in the 1970s, experienced in their lifetime it amazes me. They went from horse and buggies to watching a man land on the moon and from bartering to a cash payment system for many commodities. As for me, when I was in my final years at Purdue University I first heard mention of something called DNA described as the building block for life, and now we've fussed over genetically-modified corn for several years. It will be interesting to see what comes next.
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