Wisconsin Folklore

10 Farm Talk from Marathon County

10 Farm Talk from Marathon County Roger Mitchell For more than a century Wisconsin's farm population has declined steadily, with one "farm crisis" succeeding another. Those family farmers who persist have typically relied not only on their own skill and hard work, but also on the assistance of neighbors, grandparents, parents, and siblings. The participation of farmers in a multifaceted and multigenerational community is particularly evident in the rich and, to outsiders, often esoteric quality of their occupational speech. Roger Mitchell's elaboration of vocabulary, proverbs, and expressions of belief is exemplary of the kind of talk a careful listener might hear amidst Wisconsin farmers over the varied course of a typical year-which is exacrly how these terms were collected. From 1979 to 1982, Roger Mitchell-recipient of a ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire-traveled to Easton, in Marathon County, during summer vacations, weekends, and school vacations to work and hang out on the Thorpe family farm. The result was a full-length study following the outline advanced in Mitchell's introduction: I will tie the Thorpe family's traditions to those historical currents which initiated that great transfer of a large portion of Norway's poor to the New World with its beckoning empty land. From these beginnings will follow the generation by generation development of what is today the Emery Thorpe dairy farm, concluding with the great-grandsons of the original immigrants, Karl and Anne. In the process of lining out the several lives of hard work that culminated in this one family farm, I will take care to present those traditional complexes of farming practices, technology, and attitudes that make Karl's great-grandsons willing and able to invest their lives in the continuation of the Thorpe dairy farm. (13) The "Farm Talk" reprinted here formed the appendices to Mitchell's larger study. Much of it was set down "on the job" as, amid various activities, he kept pen and notebook in a pocket to record an emergent word or phrase and its meaning: This is a body of tradition not easily come by. There is little of the comfortable sitting down with some elderly informant, tape recorder on the ready, and probing his fond memories of things long gone. Instead, it calls for observation and participation, with much information collected within the ordinary ebb and Row of everyday affairs. It demands large segments of time, for the tempo of the farm changes from season to season. Spring planting, summer haying and silo filling, fall harvesting of grains and straw for bedding, and the long winter's milking and caring for the animals while in the barn: each of these periods has its own finite characteristics. (10) 89 10.1. Charlie Kubista brings in the hay, with pitchforks aligned in traditional parallel fashion, rural Sarona, mid-1930s. Wisconsin Folk Museum Collection, courtesy of Rose Kubista Tomesh. 90 MITCHELL: Farm Talk/rom Marathon County Mitchell's willingness to experience each period stemmed in part from his similar roots on a dairy farm in wooded northern Maine during the 1930s and 1940s-a place where, as in Wisconsin, farmers have also been loggers, hunters, trappers, fishermen, carpenters, and mechanics. Consequenrly, the farm talk reprinted here is accompanied by indications of the presence, divergence, or total absence of a given Wisconsin expression in Maine. likewise Mitchell was well aware that the "wisdom" of proverbs and the "truth" of folk beliefs tend, for those who use them, to cluster variously along continua of acceptance and reiection, seriousness and iocularity. As he put it, the Wisconsin dairy farmer does not wait for the oak leaves to attain the size of a squirrel's foot before he plants his corn. As soon as the soil dries out enough to get on it with his heavy machinery he begins to put in his crops. Nor does he hold back from mowing hay when he notices the family dog eating grass, although a local saying has it this is a sure sign of rain. He pays much more attention to radio and television weather forecasts, even though he realizes that the weatherman, too, is often wrong. Why then have I heard so many bits of lore referring to old ideas about animal behavior, health, bad luck, and weather in time spent on the Thorpe farm? (9) The answers-for...