Britain Farm – Rita Mace

0:00:01	Introduction
0:00:28	Short History of Interviewer
0:00:50	Life on Farm and Chores
0:02:51	What the Farm Raised and Produced
0:03:17	Land and Allotment
0:04:13	Animals Raised
0:05:38	How Many Animals There Were
0:06:35	Chores Compared to Summer and In-School
0:07:04	What they Raised in the Garden
0:07:59	Orchards
0:09:01	Orchard Land and Homes
0:09:25	Orchards
0:09:58	Story about Grandma’s Pie Baking
0:10:19	Growing Potatoes
0:11:28	Family/Machines Hired Out
0:13:15	Story About Sitting in Tractor’s Trailer
0:13:37	Why They Didn’t Sell Most of their Products
0:14:44	Selling Wheat and Corn
0:15:12	Family Members Stopped Farming
0:17:14	Rita’s Typical Day in the Summer
0:19:23	Why Family Members Stopped Farming
0:20:41	Her Grandfather Wanted to Farm
0:21:24	World War II Influence?
0:22:27	Story About Grandfather
0:23:14	Changing Agricultural Practices
0:24:53	Crop Rotation
0:25:43	Tillage
0:26:15	Irrigation System
0:26:40	Acreage for Cash Crops
0:28:27	Onsite Milling and Killing Animals
0:30:39	Salting/Curing and Her Role
0:31:15	Farm Collaboration
0:32:55	Unexpected Challenges?
0:33:27	Corn Shuckings
0:35:12	Communal Meals
0:37:11	Grandfather’s Underground Cellar
0:38:12	Government Support
0:38:50	What Her Dad Raised
0:40:08	Gender Roles
0:42:16	Story About Her Driving a Tractor
0:43:21	Farming Practices After Marriage and Children
0:45:23	Family Traditions
0:47:24	Favorite Memory
0:48:35	Conclusion

Bethany Mace
Hi, this is Bethany Mace and I’m interviewing Rita Mace on October 18th, 2024, in Connelly Springs, Burke County. Today we’ll be exploring Rita’s family farm from the 1940s to today. So first, I want to ask you what year you were born in and your age if that’s okay.

Rita Mace
Yes. I was born in 1950 and my current age is 74.

Bethany Mace
So, have you always lived in Burke County?

Rita Mace
Yes.

Bethany Mace
And what was it like growing up here?

Rita Mace
I loved it. This is the only place I’ve ever known so I really don’t have any other place to compare it to.

Bethany Mace
And so, what was it like growing up on a family farm here?

Rita Mace
I mean, I enjoyed it. I’d been young. I didn’t have a lot to do just because that was left up to my dad and his brothers and his dad. And of course the older women like my mother. So, when you were young, you did have chores but not out in the fields. I can remember maybe going out to the garden and helping gather picked beans or gathered tomatoes or something like that.

Bethany Mace
So, what kind of chores did you do in the house?

Rita Mace
We would probably be asked to make our beds, sweep. We were always sweeping. My grandma’s front yard and when I say that she didn’t have grass. You took branches and put them together and made a broom. And that’s how you swept your front yard.

Bethany Mace
So, was it just dirt?

Rita Mace
It was just dirt. But she liked it to be not a lot of leaves or twigs or branches or rocks in it. So, we swept the front yard. You swept your yard. So, chores might have been also like helping to hang clothes on the clothesline or taking them down, helping fold. Might be asked to wash dishes, set the table. Just normal chores.

Bethany Mace
So, what kind of farming did you and your family do? And did you raise any animals?

Rita Mace
They raised corn and wheat. I’m just trying to think. Probably oats. Those would’ve been the big, big crops.

Bethany Mace
How many acres do you think were allotted to each?

Rita Mace
I was told later, and we’ve never gone to the courthouse for record, but I was told that when my grandfather bought the land, and that would have been probably around 1930-31, that he had 600 acres of land, approximately 600 acres.

Bethany Mace
And so, what was the corn, wheat, and oats split up by? Do you know?

Rita Mace
I have no idea cause he owned the fields that was all around the house. All of those, if it could be made into a field to plant something, it was.

Bethany Mace
And did you raise any animals?

Rita Mace
They had pigs, hogs, whatever you want to call them, and cows. Chickens. That’s how they (??). That was your three forms of meat, pretty much. I never remember having anything like goats or sheep on it. It was cows and bulls and pigs and chickens.

Bethany Mace
And, this was mainly for food, for personal use?

Rita Mace
Yes, and for milk. They milked the cows for milk and butter, and then they would raise some for beef, what they called beef, to kill. That might have been a male. And definitely the pigs and the chickens were raised. That’s why they were raised, to lay eggs and also provide meat. And when they killed the hogs, they made lard, which was an oil, out of the fat that they used in cooking.

Bethany Mace
Okay, so y’all used about everything you could off the animals?

Rita Mace
They used, yes.

Bethany Mace
And how many of each do you think you had? How many pigs did you have on average?

Rita Mace
Oh my, I just don’t remember. There could be as many as a half a dozen pigs, maybe, at one time. Yeah, there were a lot. Quite a few cows. And there was always, you know, a couple bulls, because they would have baby cows and baby bulls. There’s probably a dozen or more cows. Chickens, who knows, they were running all over the place. (Interviewer laughs) They were free-range chickens. So, we would have to go find their nest. And a lot of them would make their nest in the barn. And that was one of our jobs also, if we were down there.

Rita Mace
And then when we were in school, we were expected to be in school and to do our homework. But if it was in the summer, and we were at Grandma’s, we were expected to help gather stuff, to do, help her do stuff, gather the eggs, sweep the yard, go out in the garden and pick beans, whatever she would ask us to do.

Bethany Mace
Okay, so what did you raise in your garden?

Rita Mace
It would be probably just about every vegetable. It would have been corn, green beans, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers. (Interviewee coughs) Excuse me. Green pepper. I mean, pretty much anything. We didn’t do the fancy things like asparagus or eggplants. Cabbage would be one thing definitely that we raised.

Bethany Mace
And was it mainly for like personal use or did you sell a lot of your (??)

Rita Mace
No, it was personal use. It was to be eaten and canned for the winter to be used.

Bethany Mace
And so, I know you talked about before that you had, that you had orchards. What were those types exactly, and how big was it, like the area?

Rita Mace
They had the apple orchard and the peach orchard. I don’t remember much about the peach orchard. And the reason is, the peach orchard was located where I grew up at now. Well, land my dad was given contained the little peach orchard, and it probably only had a couple dozen peach trees in it. But he cut those down, and when dad and mom built their house, we moved in, and I was only three, and so, all I can remember is where it’s at now was what we call the pig lot or the hog lot.

Rita Mace
That’s where dad cut down those trees and fixed it up and made a pig lot out of it.

Bethany Mace
So that was at your mom and dad’s house?

Rita Mace
Yes, but see my grandfather still owned all that land, but when mom and dad got married that was part of their share of the land that they were given.

Bethany Mace
So, like up on the hill?

Rita Mace
Mm hmm.

Bethany Mace
And where was the apple orchard at?

Rita Mace
It was down at Grandma’s. It was down there. And actually, the road that goes into Don’s [Don Abee] house down through there. All down through there was where the apple trees were at. And there was I don’t know probably a couple dozen of those. I can just remember them being all the way down that road.

Bethany Mace
Oh, wow.

Rita Mace
Because my grandmother was a pie baker. And so, she baked, especially apple pies. Her two pies I can remember her baking a lot of, were apple pies and pumpkin pies. So, they would have raised their own pumpkins. (phone ding).

Rita Mace
They raised sweet potatoes. Because she actually, being on a farm like that, and raising you canned everything. And she canned sweet potatoes. Yeah, or if you couldn’t keep them, I can remember.

Bethany Mace
Were they easy to grow here? Like potatoes?

Rita Mace
What, the potatoes? Were they easy to grow?

Bethany Mace
Yeah, here.

Rita Mace
I have no idea. A lot of people grow them. We’ve grown them before. so yeah, that.

Bethany Mace
I feel like sometimes it’s a little difficult.

Rita Mace
So once mom and dad married and we moved into that house, we had our own little garden. But my dad still farmed with all of them. And here’s a really interesting thing. They, they farmed. They had a lot of farmland. Got that much. Well, there were other people in the community that had, that also farmed and had corn and wheat, but they always didn’t have the equipment to gather it. So, my grandfather, my father and his brothers would be hired out. And they would take their equipment to these other people, to these other farmers, and they would gather their corn or combine their wheat, and then they would get paid to do that.

Rita Mace
So.

Bethany Mace
So, they were, they used the equipment.

Rita Mace
They used their equipment to help others out, because you had to have corn pickers and, and things for the wheat, special machinery to gather wheat, and oats, corn pickers, hay bales. See, they had hay bales where after you cut the winch that you went through and did, or you do like they do now, but it’s out of our house. Cut the grass. And do the hay, because they had to have that for the cows and stuff in the wintertime.

Bethany Mace
And they got paid, like, they got paid (muffled talking)

Rita Mace
They would get paid to take their equipment there and work. Now, how much? I was too young to. I can just remember my dad telling me that, and I can also remember when they were doing that at our house. I mean, the field across from grandpas. I’ve sat in the, in the trailer where the corn and stuff would be coming out or the wheat and ride around in it, so.

Bethany Mace
And so, was any of your, any of the orchards or any other thing, did you sell them?

Rita Mace
Not that I’m aware of because my dad was one of nine children. One of them died when he was 29 but when you are having, you are feeding 11 people, it takes a lot.

Bethany Mace
Yeah.

Rita Mace
And they were all males except for my grandmother and my dad’s two sisters. And so, you’re still feeding a lot of people. And even after my dad was married, all of them were married except for 3 of them, all that they gather, like the corn, for instance, or the wheat. They all sort of, like, owned that. And they still took that to mills to grind in exchange for cornmeal and flour.

Rita Mace
And then they sold some of that. That’s how they made their money. They, they sold the wheat and the corn. Now things that came out of the garden, like the beans and stuff, no. The corn and wheat and et cetera that was raised in the fields, yes, that was sold. That’s, that’s how they made their money.

Bethany Mace
Okay, so this kind of became like a family business, like communal.

Rita Mace
It was until the family started growing or getting married, and they had to find other means. They started doing different things other than farming. One of my uncles went into service, and when he came out and got married, he went into factory work. The two youngest ones went into factory work. So, by the time I was getting into being eight, ten years old, they were still, only my dad and one of my uncles were still farming.

Rita Mace
The rest of them had gone to work in the mills. One of them. And then my dad and his brother that were farming, and they still farmed, but they were also ran a store and was a mechanic. So, yes, that business sort of finally had to just keep dwindling down, that it was no longer. See, my grandfather got ill when I was like four years old. He could no longer do anything. So, it was left up to the boys. They were getting married. They needed more of an income than what the farm could bring in. My grandfather was never a rich man, only in land. That’s what I’ve always said. And so, by the time you divided all that land up between eight children, there’s

Bethany Mace
And so, could you explain what a typical day was like for you and your family?

Rita Mace
In the summer or in the winter when I’m in school?

Bethany Mace
In the summer, when you’re working.

Rita Mace
I can’t say that I worked much in the summer, but a typical day, my mom went to work when I was six years old, seven, in a hosiery mill. So, my typical day was getting up in the mornings, and my sister and I would find us something for breakfast. My dad was going to work, he was a mechanic at his brother’s store. And so, we were left there, but then we were told to go to grandma’s. So, we would walk to grandma’s. So, a typical day would be down at grandma’s in the summer, and sometimes some of the rest of them would be there. My cousins, and we would play.

Rita Mace
If we had a bike, we would ride a bike. If we didn’t ride a bike, we were out in the woods exploring, making playhouses in the woods. Just playing. We didn’t play inside unless, for some reason, my grandmother loved the board game Parcheesi. And she wanted us to always play with her. And she loved putting jigsaw puzzles together and she loved watching some of the game shows that were starting to come on tv in the mid to late 50s early 60s and so that was our entertainment inside. Would be to play Parcheesi with her or help her put a puzzle together. Didn’t do much remembrance of doing a lot of things, did more for her outside than we did inside for her.

Rita Mace
You see at that time all of her children were married and gone.

Bethany Mace
And so, both your parents and like a lot of your relatives worked outside of this farm. Why do you think that is?

Rita Mace
It just wasn’t, I guess, by the time they started getting married and they wanted their own land, I think they just probably, I don’t, I can’t say they lost interest, but I think they needed more of a different kind of job to sustain them and their families. Does that make sense? Yes, they had to go and look for more work than what the farm. There’s changing of times, changing of prices. I think looking now at somebody that farms, how much work is, is in it, the equipment you have to buy, probably a lot of the government laws.

Rita Mace
So, I think my grandfather just wanted that land to farm. That’s all he knew was farming and he owned a little sawmill that they worked at. And that brought in money and all of them worked at the sawmill. Until, like I said, they got married and they were spreading out.

Bethany Mace
Where was that sawmill at?

Rita Mace
It is on Jeeter Shell Road [Jeeter Shell Avenue]. Off of Miller Bridge [Road].

Bethany Mace
Okay. Going into like change, kind of change over time. But so, I know you were born after World War II, but how did you think the war impacted, like farming practices in your family specifically?

Rita Mace
By the time World War I ended, I was not born until 1950.

Bethany Mace
World War II.

Rita Mace
World War II. By the time it ended in 1945. (Phone ding) Five years later, I was born in 1950. You’re a baby. You don’t know much. You don’t start remembering anything till you’re four or five years old. That’s my remembrance of it. How it impacted I can’t say. I have no idea. Really, that was something I never thought about. I mean, I just was down on the farm, as they say.

Bethany Mace
Yeah. Okay.

Rita Mace
I was just watching my dad and his brothers and my grandma and, and by the time I’m remembering stuff, my grandpa was already very sick. So, I don’t remember a whole lot about my grandfather. Okay. So, it’s more like the boys just took over all of that. And like some of them, there were several that probably was not interested at all. Less interested in the farming. They, let’s see about all of them just moved right in around on that land. Some of them didn’t. A little bit farther away, so. Okay.

Bethany Mace
So, how did agricultural practices change between like the 50s, 60s, and 70s?

Rita Mace
How did they change?

Bethany Mace
Like, did any industrialization, stuff like that?

Rita Mace
I think, from what I saw back then, what I saw now, I think better equipment helped them. The way they plant things now, where I’ve seen it at our house, where the guys up there, where you harvest the corn, you know, you get that, and they don’t do anything to the land, they just go right back in and plant like soybeans. Where it seemed like it took hours and hours for my dad and his family to get a piece of land ready. You, you would plow that, that’s different how, how they are planting stuff and how the machinery they use. I guess that’s, you know, the biggest changes I’ve seen is the, the newer machinery, the newer ways of planting and harvesting stuff. I think it’s changed.

Bethany Mace
And so, you’ve practiced crop rotation, crop rotation?

Rita Mace
Yes, they did, yes. If you had corn in that field, you did not plant corn again in that same field, you let it rest at least a year. And I think they still do that. And there’s certain things that they would plant, like I think, and it might be soy and I may be wrong, but it seemed like soybeans was one thing that would add certain things to the ground, nutrients that would help the next time. And I think that they looked at that, and even back then, yeah, it was rotation. You didn’t know.

Bethany Mace
So, what about tillage? Like tilling, I know we practice it in our garden, but did y’all till and plow fields before to get them ready and prepared?

Rita Mace
Oh yes, that was a big thing, was having that ground just right to plant that corn. So that way, it had to be, the ground had to be right, the time had to be right, it couldn’t be out there muddy, so yes, they were doing all that.

Bethany Mace
And did you have any irrigation systems?

Rita Mace
No.

Bethany Mace
No?

Rita Mace
Depended on the Lord to send the rain.

Bethany Mace
So, you may not, you might not know this, but if you do, do you know how many acreage that you, was any of your acreage used for cash crops?

Rita Mace
Now, when you say cash crops, like they sold it?

Bethany Mace
Yeah.

Rita Mace
Yes, they sold their corn and wheat and stuff, what they raised. A lot of it was to sell. That’s, that was their living, was to raise it and sell. Of course, they used a certain amount, like I said, to take and have ground for, for flour and for cornmeal, but no majority of it was to sale.

Bethany Mace
Do you know how many acres that would be, per chance?

Rita Mace
Out of the six hundred, I don’t know. There was quite a few trees on it. I’d say if there, if there was approximately 600 I would say. I have no, I can’t tell say because I have no idea because there was so much. All that in behind grandpa’s, grandma’s house that went all the way down to Uncle Grady’s was woods.

Bethany Mace
Woods. Oh, okay.

Rita Mace
Yeah. So. Oh, it was several hundred acres, I’m sure, that was farmed.

Bethany Mace
That’s a lot of acres to keep up with.

Rita Mace
I’ll just say it was a full time job.

Bethany Mace
And so, I know that you sold a lot of things, and you also went to the mill to mill things and to sell there. But did you do anything on site?

Rita Mace
What do you mean?

Bethany Mace
Like, on your property? Like, what did you do? Like, did you mill on property? Did you kill your own animals on your property?

Rita Mace
The animals were killed on our property. We had the building that was just torn down recently was the millhouse. It had a millstone in it. So apparently, I used to go up in there and play and run around, but I can remember wheat or oats laying up in there. So, I’m going to say that they used it for something and they bagged it up.

Bethany Mace
And so, where. Did you have a specific place that the animals were killed at, on site?

Rita Mace
Well, yeah, when, where the hog lots and things were at, the hog pens and things, they probably had a certain place where they had to slaughter them, and shave them with their hair, and do all that. And then, once that was done, the meat was probably taken up somewhere, to the house, or near the house, where they would cut it up and do, and see they had smokehouses. And what that was for was to take the hams, and the shoulders, and the fat back, and the bacon strips, and all, and salt them down, and hang them in there. And that’s how they preserved their hog meat, was in the smokehouse.

Bethany Mace
And you had a smokehouse on the farm?

Rita Mace
Yes, I still have one on my land.

Bethany Mace
Yeah.

Rita Mace
It’s just not used. On my dad’s land. Yes. Pretty much everybody. You had a smokehouse. If you raised hogs to kill, you had a smokehouse on your property to keep the meat in.

Bethany Mace
And so, did you help any with salting or drying or curing? Any like curing?

Rita Mace
I would watch them, sure. If, if you were big enough and they were cutting up the fat to render out for lard, you were at the table with the knife cutting up the fat into small pieces. To render out. So yes, you helped. Depending on what job it was, you helped. If you were big enough, if you were old enough.

Bethany Mace
And so, did your family collaborate with any other farms or families in the community?

Rita Mace
For what reason? Just, I guess help maybe you were able to grow, if you didn’t grow certain crops, like enough of one crop, that you got help from other?

Bethany Mace
That I don’t know. All I do know is that they, my dad said that they would go to other people’s farms and help, you know, combine their corn or their wheat and pick their corn. That, that’s all I know because where my grandfather’s land was, the other farms or people that lived adjacent to us, on down farther, were not farmers, not, not big, that close. A lot of them were just homes with gardens. And then you might get to the next section, section where the Carswell’s were big farmers. And they were on down the road, and they. So, no, I, I don’t say getting together as far as helping with each other’s crops. That I don’t remember. If it happened, I don’t remember.

Bethany Mace
It was more independent? It was more independent?

Rita Mace
I think so.

Bethany Mace
And so, when you were farming, were there any unexpected challenges that you and your family faced, ever, that you can remember?

Rita Mace
Oh, what now?

Bethany Mace
Were there any unexpected challenges when you farmed that you, that you can remember?

Rita Mace
No. I just thought it was a great time. I thought I just grew up.

Bethany Mace
Do you remember a year where there wasn’t a good harvest?

Rita Mace
No.

Bethany Mace
No?

Rita Mace
I have participated in two corn shuckings.

Bethany Mace
Really? What is that?

Rita Mace
One of them was at my grandfather’s. And that was before you got the machinery. that would pick the corn and basically shuck it for you, you had corn shuckings. And you went and gathered the corn and piled them into these big piles, and then all your neighbors came and helped you. So, yes, we collaborated with each other because they would go to another farm that did the same thing. And you would have the, you know, men, and the young boys out there, and the little kids running around, one or two, shucking the corn. And the women were inside cooking the meal, and you had a big meal.

Rita Mace
People brought stuff; you were in there cooking. And so, I was probably about three or four. Because they’ve had them before, but that’s the, they had one at my grandfather’s, my Grandpa Lowman’s, and then my great grandpa Brittan had one that I remember going to.

Bethany Mace
So just for reference, what years would that be?

Rita Mace
I would say 1953. Some were 53, 54, 55 at the most. Because I don’t remember a whole lot about it.

Bethany Mace
And did you have a lot of, like, communal meals, family meals?

Rita Mace
Other than, no, you always had a meal at the corn shucking. When somebody passed away, everybody gathered and brought stuff and had meals. But most of the meals that we had often would be at my grandma’s, my grandpa’s, and where she would cook and others would bring in and they would cook and the whole family would eat.

Bethany Mace
Can you describe what those were like?

Rita Mace
What the meals? You always had chicken. Most of the time chicken and dumplings. And you had things that (phone ringing).

Rita Mace
You had definitely chicken and dumplings and, and like fried chicken, and you would have stuff you would have raised out of the garden. If it was summertime, you know, you were going to have whatever you’d raised. The women just cooked. They made pies. They made cakes. They made puddings. I mean, those were some of the best meals. You had corn, green beans, probably tomatoes, if it was summertime. And then in the wintertime, you probably had the canned green beans. And you know, just whatever. Potatoes. See, they raised potatoes. That was another thing they raised was potatoes.

Rita Mace
Kept those. And before, I can remember where it was at, but there was a cellar on grandpa’s land. It was underground. That you walked in, and that’s where they kept their milk and butter. Stuff in. Cold water.

Bethany Mace
They keep potatoes down there?

Rita Mace
I don’t know what all they kept. It might have been too cold for potatoes.

Rita Mace
It would have froze them. Because this was a cellar cold enough to keep milk and butter.

Bethany Mace
Yeah. Wow.

Rita Mace
So that’s how people kept it back in those. And there was one on that land. And they used it until they got power in the house. Electricity run.

Bethany Mace
So, kind of switching gears. So, I know that the federal government supported farming in the 60s and 70s. So, what was that support like, if you can remember anything like later, once you grew up?

Rita Mace
I don’t because by that time my dad wasn’t doing a lot of farming. And so, I don’t think it affected anything with the government. No.

Bethany Mace
Was there any local government intervention at all?

Rita Mace
Not that I know of. What my dad farmed, after I got older, was corn that he could use for, to grind up for feed for the pigs. And wheat so he could have straw or hay to feed the cows.

Bethany Mace
Okay, so y’all transitioned from, like, farming to more raising animals?

Rita Mace
No, we raised as many animals. We didn’t have as many, but we still had to, see, Dad would raise only, like, two hogs a year. Maybe three, but we might not kill one, it all depends. So, no, it, more was transition to the farming was to supply what he needed to feed the few pigs and cows that we had.

Rita Mace
No, it just was a slow process of getting down, decreasing.

Bethany Mace
And so, could you explain any gender roles that you saw in farming practices that were split by gender?

Rita Mace
Well, other than it was more the man who did the farming work. And the women who did more of the gardening, the housekeeping, the cooking, taking care of the kids. The men went out and worked. Now, later on, most of the, my aunts and my mom, that married, most all I went out except for one and got public jobs later. But back when I was young, you saw them still having the role of being the mother and the wife and being in the house, especially my grandma. My grandma never worked a public job because she had nine children and it was feeding you know, cooking, cleaning, taking care of babies, laundry.

Bethany Mace
That was a full time job in itself.

Rita Mace
That was more. In fact, I think my dad used to tell me that his older sister, Thelma, who was the second oldest in the family, would take care of all the younger kids while my grandma was doing things like laundry and cooking. That Thelma was given the responsibility of taking care of the younger kids. Looking after them, changing diapers, whatever, feeding them, whatever needed to be done.

Bethany Mace
So, as the farm got smaller and smaller, and you got older, did you do anything outside like working in the gardens or farming.

Rita Mace
Just fun, when dad was taking up hay and your dad was still little and they was out there and I’d drive the tractor while they was throwing hay bales on the back of the trailer.

Rita Mace
And, yeah, my dad, I was driving a tractor before I was driving a car.

Bethany Mace
Oh, me too (Interviewer and Interviewee laughs)

Rita Mace
No. No, my dad had me. Well, I can’t say that, too. It was probably about the same time because my dad was letting me drive a car when I was in the sixth grade. But I’d only drive it from my house down to Grandma’s and it was a dirt road. And you had a car that would pass like every 15, 20 minutes. Maybe one every 30 [minutes]. Yes, and I would drive down. I was twelve years old.

Bethany Mace
It’s crazy to see Miller Bridge Road as a dirt road.

Rita Mace
So, yes, I drove the tractor after that. Not really planning anything, but I might have been pulling a trailer. I did plow a field getting it ready. Dad put me on it and said, Keep it in this gear and keep it going, and I did.

Bethany Mace
And so, once you got married, did any of your practices change? Like, did you learn anything from your husband and his family at all?

Rita Mace
No, then (phone dings), we were both working and the only practice, we still raised cows for a couple years. And, and hogs and pigs, I guess, until Shane and Neil were probably up 10, 12 years old. We were still raising a pig and it just got too much work. Trying to raise something to feed them. Going after the feed, you know, so that stopped. So, it basically got down to raising a garden. And that was it.

Bethany Mace
Were there anything, things that papaw (phone rings)

Interview Paused.

Bethany Mace
Okay, so were there anything that papaw did that changed how you farmed at all? Were there new things that he did?

Rita Mace
What do you mean that he did?

Bethany Mace
Like his family farming, did you get anything from him? Like learning wise about gardening and stuff?

Rita Mace
Oh well I guess between him and your papaw, my husband, yes, that’s where mostly, of knowing the garden came from. My dad and, and my husband.

Bethany Mace
Were there any traditions that you saw and loved growing up?

Rita Mace
Any traditions? Like, gosh. My whole family is about traditions. I don’t know exactly what you mean by that.

Bethany Mace
Was there one that you loved? Like, specifically can remember loving growing up?

Rita Mace
Yes. The one tradition that we had, for some reason, on Saturday nights and Sunday nights, was a time for the family together at grandma and prandpa Lowman’s. And that was all the kids and their wives. the children, I should say, their children, their wives, and the grandchildren. And they sit around if it was in the winter. They were in the living room talking. The kids were put in the kitchen and dining room to play games, and the older kids entertained the younger ones. And if it was summertime, they were on the front porch playing, and we were playing out in the yard or playing hide and go seek, or red rover, red rover. Any of those games that we could play. That was one of my favorite times, because it was with all of my cousins.

(phone rings)

Bethany Mace
We can pause again.

Interview Paused.

Bethany Mace
And so, are there any traditions that you carry with your family today?

Rita Mace
No, not really, other than we like to meet. You know how my kids like to meet, and my grandkids, and have meals at our house.

Bethany Mace
And so, the last question what was a favorite memory of yours growing up?

Rita Mace
What was my what?

Bethany Mace
What was a favorite memory of yours growing up?

Rita Mace
Just being down there at my grandma’s and seeing everything that was going on and being with my cousins, and my family, and the simple life of running and playing and just not having any…By the time you’re growing up, you’re young, you’re not thinking about the future, I mean you’re not having a lot of worries, you’re just having fun, carefree, just carefree, yep.

Bethany Mace
Just enjoying the, enjoying the present?

Rita Mace
Just enjoying that, yeah. And you know how close I live to my grandparents, so it was not, nothing but a walk. And just feeling safe to be able to be six and eight years old and walking from my grandpa’s back to my house. In the summertime at dark. And never worry about it.

Bethany Mace
Okay, well that concludes our interview. I just want to thank you for your time today.

Rita Mace
Thank you.