From the Relief Society Magazine, 1933 –

The Call of the Land

By Agnes Just Reid

When Barbara Wentworth was left alone with four small children, people wondered what she would do. There was no insurance, for never in his life had Nat Wentworth been considered a safe risk for the insurance companies. In war time he had only gone as far as the training camp, to be told what he already knew, that his heart was likely to play out almost any minute. So, after nine years of anxiety, interspersed with much happiness, the blow had fallen and Barbara was alone.

“Poor Babs,” everyone said, “will have to go back to teaching school; and who will rear those babies for her?”

There was no one who would rear them, and Barbara was not sure that she would be willing to give anyone the chance. These precious babies were all she had left; and, even with the many serious sick spells Nat had had, she had never been away from the children over night. When one of them went any place, they all went; and she could not bring herself to change that custom.

Her father talked to her seriously over what was best, and, while not wishing to influence her, he felt, as everyone did, that teaching was perhaps the most sensible thing for her to attempt.

“No, Dad,” she said, “I may do it later, but right now I want to try farming. It would take several hundred dollars to put me back in school even for the short time necessary to make it possible for me to teach again. Then besides the rent, the light, the water, the books, the help, the countless things that must be paid for, always there looms before me the things that might happen to the children during even a few weeks. When I have tried to consider it always before me comes a vision – a vision that has become a perfect obsession of little “Snookie” being run over by an automobile. No one but her mother can take care of her for a few years; no one else knows the fleetness of her tiny feet.”

“Well, tell me, my girl, what your plans are; and no matter how unreasonable they may seem to be, I shall do my best to help you carry them out.”

Barbara cried a little. She well knew that whatever she did, she must be a burden to that wonderful Dad, whose shoulders were already bowed with the loads of other people.

“I want you, Dad, to go somewhere in your field where the ditches are all made, far enough away so that my children and my chickens will not be running back to bother you, and there build me a little house on the land that you had intended to be mine. Just a little, little house – a cabin even. The smaller it is, the smaller my coal bill will be; but no matter how small it is, it will be home.”

“I believe you are right,” said her father; “but have you thought of the isolation, the loneliness? There will be no telephone, no mail route, not even a highway where you can see people passing.”

“Yes,” Barbara assured him, “I have been over every foot of the ground. I know, too, that wherever I go there will always be loneliness, loneliness that sometimes seems unendurable, but there are two thoughts that always come to give me courage: one is, I have heard that the percent of children from broken homes in the reform schools is appalling. I must raise my children in a broken home, and I must keep them on the land or they may go wrong. The other thought is the memory of my grandmother. She lived where there was no telephone, no mail route, no highway; and yet she raised you, Dad.”

So the first thing when the spring days came was Barbara’s cabin. it had, in truth, but one room and a big porch screened ready for protection from mosquitos and flies. To it Barbara brought their furniture, their partly worn out machinery, and their team. The car, they had let go to pay a debt, for she felt that a car without a man to take care of it was a needless expense and worry.

One of the first things she did was order a thousand day-old chicks of a breed that would make good weight by August. That done, she plowed and harrowed her garden patch. Again and again she leveled and harrowed it until the soil looked so inviting that it seemed as if no seed could fail to grow; but before she began to plant, she fenced off with sticks and strings four small plots. They were like the beds that are described in the story of the three bears: there was a good sized plot for big sister, a medium sized plot for big brother, one a size smaller for little brother, and a wee, tiny plot for baby “Snookie.” Into each little garden, each little member of this new organization put seeds of everything just like those in mother’s big garden. Sometimes they had to practice cooperation; and big brother would have to do some of the heavy work for “Snookie,” but as far as was possible Barbara had each little farmer take care of his own plot.

She and Nat had planned to put in a good many potatoes, so she had seed potatoes; but she concluded to try only an acre for the first year and let the rest go to pay for the chickens and the feed they would need. All the planting and plowing and cultivating were old stories to Barbara, for she had always helped Nat with every kind of work. She used to beg him to let her work in the field instead of hiring a man. She loved to work in the field, and she did hate to cook for an extra man; so, after all, she was doing the work she liked best, and there was always a degree of satisfaction as she turned wearily toward the house to know that bread and milk and fruit would be their supper, and they would not even have to light a fire.

As the summer wore on, she saw the children growing almost as fast as the garden; and the little cheeks that had been too pale were rosy and sunburned. They hardly ever quarreled, either. They were too busy all day and too tired when the day was over.

A few times her father had sent a man to help her a day or two, but nearly everything she and the children had been able to manage. Never a day passed but someone came by to see how she was, but she had a feeling that she was beginning to stand on her own feet. Every two or three weeks she went to town with her father to get what few things they needed. In recognition of the countless favors she received, there were the choicest vegetables picked, often cleaned, and sent to the home folks each day; perhaps a bucket of shelled peas, a sack of corn, or a basket of rosy ripe tomatoes. Barbara was one of those for whom things seemed to take a delight in growing.

Many friends came to see her and she always insisted on sharing the fruits of her labors with them; even though the fruits happened to be vegetables, they were none the less acceptable.

It was with no little pride that Barbara showed the junior gardens to everyone that came. The small, even rows had been carefully hoed and weeded by small, willing fingers; and there was great family rejoicing when a cucumber entered at the County Fair from one of the vines in little brother’s garden took first prize.

Fall came and the two children were starting to school. Barbara was tired, so tired that she was looking forward with pleasure to the time when she could sit all day at her sewing machine and create pretty garments for her little flock. It had been a happy summer. Not one of them had been sick a day, and everything had turned out even better than she had hoped.

After gathering in the last of the drying corn, Barbara sat down to do a little figuring. The chickens, she had sold in August because she had no winter quarters for so many, had made her $300.00. She realized that weather and all other conditions had favored her or she would not have been able to clear that much. She had not attempted to sell vegetables for she was too far from market, but her cellar was full of vitamins, even to a hundred quarts of tomatoes – all the work of her hands. The potatoes had been an average crop; sold out of the field they brought her $200.00. Then there was the most interesting crop of all, her jelly. About the middle of May she had set out two long rows of Wonder Berries. By the middle of August, after the care of her chickens was ended, she began to make jelly. Before the frost took the berries, she had made and sold to a local merchant six hundred glasses of jelly at 25 cents a glass. When the sugar was paid for that made her another $100.00.

She was still toying with her pencil when her father came walking in. she looked up almost joyfully when she heard his step: “Dad, I’ve made $600.00 this year and it has been only a beginning. I won’t have to teach school now, will I?”

Her father smiled a wan sort of a smile; there was a sob in his throat. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he said: “Maybe, after all, I have reared a girl who appreciates what is in this land, which two generations have spent their lives reclaiming.”