This regular column is supposed to be about farming – and so it is, but not about cows, crops or tractors.
It’s set in the kitchen.
The eldest of four sons of a working mother, with no sisters for the chore, I learned my way around the kitchen at an early age. When we left our rented farm in Republic in 1957 and moved to our own farm in Dallas County, I was just 9 years old.
Mom worked in the lab at Burge Protestant Hospital (now Cox-North) in Springfield and Dad was gone most of every day as an artificial inseminator for Curtiss Breeding Service. That left me at home for an hour with two younger brothers after the Fair Grove school bus dropped us off (Stephen didn’t come along for another year).
Even before the move I had begun working on my cooking skills making popcorn when were on our own. My first attempt was a learning experience. Copying what I’d seen Mom do I put our big popcorn skillet on the gas stove, poured in some cooking oil and popcorn kernels and watched it heat to a sizzle. But when it seemed I was just frying corn, rather popping it, I dumped the whole batch in the trash. Just as I was dumping it, though, I noticed a few fluffy white kernels. That’s when I realized my mistake – impatience. After the next try Russell and I had a bag of popcorn.
I probably wasn’t supposed to use the gas stove, but I don’t recall Mom scolding me. I do recall getting to make popcorn for everyone thereafter – but only after Mom got home after work.
That was my auspicious introduction to cooking, a skill born mostly out of necessity. After we moved to the farm I tried my hand at several after-school treats and never once set the kitchen on fire. Over my adolescent years I never aspired to cooking gourmet meals, but found I could make a decent chocolate cake following directions on the Hershey’s cocoa can. I even mastered the icing from butter, cocoa and powdered sugar. Soon I graduated to chocolate fudge ( not that modern stuff with marshmallow cream), blackberry cobbler, biscuits, cornbread and a host of other things. Though I got tips from Mom and my grandma, mostly I learned everything from the labels on baking powder and lard containers, or flour and corn meal bags.
Long after Dad quit the Curtiss business I was still often in the kitchen, especially in summer when we spent long days in the hayfield. But, that didn’t excuse me from the farm work for more than a half-hour. At the same time as I was learning to boil beans and make corn bread, I was learning how to stack loose hay, back the truck into the barn, split fence posts and all that other farm stuff.
As a result I approached adulthood not only with a healthy work ethic, but with a good bit of “food sense” that assured me I’d never have to rely on anyone else to fix my supper. Of course, if they wanted to….
When some of my school friends learned I could cook, do laundry and other tasks my mom couldn’t always get around to, they kidded me about “making somebody a good wife someday.” I never took offense. They had no idea how close it was to the truth.
Cooking put me through college, paid the bills before I could get a newspaper job, and I’m still in the kitchen at home. I hear no complaints from the distaff side.
I’ve never fully understood the culture that labels some jobs “women’s work” and others “men’s work.”
A job needing done doesnt’ care a whit about gender.
At the same time as I was helping the family with dinner, many of my female classmates were helping their families with the raking and baling of hay.
The way I see it, we were all farmers, but family first.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
