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To see more visit this link, My farm life chapter
Welcome to my article, My farm life chapter.
Dear readers, this is the continuation of my farm life, so, whatever I am telling you here is the story of my life and nothing else. Now we can say that no matter how negative life can be, there must be some positive things also.
I believe that to explain what life was like in the farms of my
native town of Genzano when I was young, I need to tell you many other
things and the town itself, and then the ways of how people used to live in
those times and what was happening at the time when I was young. So, let me
talk about the town and the population first.
From my memory, I believe that the town of Genzano di Lucania early in the twentieth century had reached a population of about 7,000 inhabitants, in the forties when I was young the population had grown to about 8,000 and reached 8,389 in 1951 inhabitants, and this is the highest number of people on record that I know of. Even though people believe that there were near 10,000 people living in Genzano, but does not matter anymore, because in the seventies it had shrunk to only 5,500 inhabitants or there about. The reasons was that lots of people had to emigrate. Today at the present time while I am writing this article, the town of Genzano has 6200 inhabitant or there about.
My native town of Genzano
is known as Genzano di Lucania to distinguish it from another Italian town
Genzano di Roma. Anyhow, Genzano di Lucania has a territory of about 21,000
Hectares of land if I remember right, and about 80% of this land is arable
land, and it is mostly used to grow wheat, especially durum wheat; the rest of
the land is used to grow grapes vines or olive trees and other farm produce,
and there are also reserves of grazing land. Anyhow, this town owes its wealth
to the rural community that produces wheat, because this town is well known to
produce lots of high-quality durum wheat, which the mills that make pasta buy at
harvest time. Now even if the mills rush to buy this durum wheat, the price of
wheat is not high, so, the farmers make only enough money to keep going and one
has to think that it takes one year to produce and harvest a crop of wheat, so,
it is not that good for the farmers; there are also other things that must be
taken into consideration.
Anyhow, there are
lots of other produce from the farms, because we used to have mixed farming,
but these produce are used locally, and if some of them are sold out of the
town, they are not a great deal to make any difference.
At the time when I
was young there were lots of small farms in Genzano, and although the most
important crop that brought in the money was durum wheat, in reality they had
to practice mixed farming for their own needs, which I will try to explain how
the farms were run at those times when I was young.
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How the farms were run then?
Now, let me explain
how these farms in southern Italy were run until the fifties, when things
started to change, because of the new farming machine that were coming out,
like the tractor and other machine that were replacing manual
work; now, because these machines helped the farmers run their farms with less
manual workers, the people that were employed in the farms had to find other
jobs. Now, let us describe how things were done then, to understand the
situation and what was happening to us young would be future farmers.
When I was young
during the fifties, before these farming machines became affordable to the
average small farmers, all the farmers used to have mixed farming, because it
was necessary for many reasons, today mixed farming is practiced to a much less
extend, and I will try to explain the reasons. Anyhow, to
make it clear, I need to describe the different way of how the land had to be used in the old days.
In the old days to
till the soil people used to do it by hand, like what we still do today in our
own small home gardens, so, they would dig the soil in very small plots with a hoe,
or something like that. But on normal fields in the farms the soil was tilled
by ploughing the fields with horse power or other strong animals. Therefore,
there was a need for a lot of people to be fed to work the fields, and there
were a lot of animals also to be fed to work the fields.
So, this need to
feed so many mouths required a lot of produce and also a variety of produce,
for this reason mixed farming was required, because it was the only way to
produce all this variety of foods that were required. In the old days for several
reasons the sowing fields had to be divided into a three-year-rotation, not
only to achieve these variety of foods, but it was also necessary to rotate the
fields to keep them producing, otherwise the soil would become tired and
produce very little, in other words if we would continue to use the fields
every year they would produce next to nothing and therefore it was not worth
working them, for this reason our forbear had devised this three year rotation,
which worked thus;
One year a field
would be fallow land and it would not be used at all, or used very little
growing broad beans or something like that, then the next year it would be sown
with durum wheat, and the year after that the same field would be sown with
oats or barley, or other light seeds, and the year after that to fallow land
again. So, in realty there was only one third of the land producing durum wheat
each year, which was the produce that brought in money to the farmers.
When I was young a
lot of people used to work in those farms, and it was hard physical work,
specially at certain times of the year, and there was no much money to be made,
with the exception of every now and then when we had a really good wheat
harvest; but when the harvest was lean everybody would suffer, and all one
could do was to start all over again for another year, and so, one was hoping
and praying God for a better harvest next year, yes in those times people were
a lot more religious than today, so, they believed in God and prayed God and
all the saints that they could think of, hoping that they could help them
produce good harvests.
Anyhow, there were
too many years of lean harvest when I was young, some average and only a few
years we had good harvests. But somehow people kept going on, and they were so
used to poverty that they accepted it and seemed to be happy just the same,
because they did not know of a better life. But one has to keep in mind that
the main harvest is only once a year, and one year is a very long time when
there is not enough money to go around, even to buy those things that were
really necessary to live a modest life.
For all the work
that I did in the farm in my youth, I earned almost nothing, but I was able to
eat plain wholesome food, and buy a few cheap cloths to keep warm in winter,
which sounds very bad these days, but then when there was nothing better that
one could do, even this hard and unpleasant way of life would have to do, as
long as one could live a healthy life; perhaps living a healthy life was the
only thing that we could achieve easily then, because the air was healthier in
the country, the life was very boring but at the same time it was not mentally
stressful compared to living in towns these days, and if there was any complain
about a stench that came from the farm animals, it was something that would not
harm anybody, it is only natural that all animals smell of something, we smell
also of something even if we don’t notice it.
The human side of farming.
Now, to understand farming and what was happening, we need to see how the ways of
living had been set up, from the generations before us for their own needs.
Anyhow, at the time
when I was young in Genzano, every family had a dwelling in town, no matter to
which group of people or families we belonged, we all had a home in town even
if it was only a few rooms that we could live-in, in the town itself. But the
farmers’ families not only had a home in town, where their women folks elderly
people and children lived; but most of the farmers had also a rustic farm
building in the fields, where the farmer would keep his animals, and with the
help of his workers if he had any workers he would work his fields from there.
The farmers’ children especially those that were to become farmers would start
working in the farm early in life, or as soon as they would finish their
compulsory schooling years, that in those times were the primary schools.
The compulsory
primary schools in Italy in those times were up to grade five; today you think
that you could not learn much in five years, but in those times, we were taught
to read and write, we were taught the four main math operations, addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division, which are the base of just about
everything, we were asked to solve simple problems with them at least ones a
week; we were also taught our human history, even if it wasn’t in small
details, it covered old history up to the Christian era, middle age history up
to the discovery of America and modern history; it wasn’t a lot, but it gave us
just enough to understand that the world changes and one Era ends and a new one
begins. Anyhow, let us go back to tell you my farm life story.
Now, some of the youths whose families were better off would start to help in the farm only during summer. But I wasn’t that lucky and at the time when I left school the first time, I was only 10 years old and I was going to be 11 years old during that year, when I had to start full time for the whole year in the farm. At that time young boys were only required to attend school up to grade 5, and I had already done so, so, I went to help in our family farm full time. Then a few years later the schooling laws changed, and all the youths had to attend school up to grade 8, or be at least 14 years old to leave school. So, I and a few other boys of my same age were the last of the little educated youths.
Now you can imagine
how I felt in the farm when I was young; I was the youngest boy around for
miles, and I was of that age when young boys would start thinking about how
best one could find a way into society, because we become aware of the need to
be social and friendly with people, otherwise we would become shy and withdrawn
just like I did.
Anyhow, this old way of living in the farms was hard for me, because, since the great loss of my father when I was 5 years old, my family had lived mourning him and a life withdrawn from society; so, now that we were all over that period of grief that any family can have, I felt that I was more withdrawn that the other boys of the same age. I needed a break, but it was not to be, because I was needed to help in the farm, so, I ended up working in the family farm and I became more isolated than ever, and that was no good for me socially.
Farming life of
those days was so hard and boring, especially for me at that time of my life,
when I was young. So, nowadays when I think about it, it makes me feel hurt and
unhappy and I ask myself, why this had to happen to me, and I feel so hurt that
I would like to tell you a story beginning with, ‘When I was young’ just to
show you how much harder life was then compared with today’s ways of life.
Now that I have explained the ways of life in the farms of those days; I am mentally going over the farm life of my ancestors, who had lived the same hard life as I did, and they did not lament about it because they did not know better; you see I want to compare all those things together, to have a clear picture of what is happening to us. By comparing the farm life of these generations, I have come to the conclusion that I and those youths that ended up working in the farms when we were young, we were the last unlucky ones, because today even if a young man ends up working in the farms, they start when they are older and they cannot be as lonely as we were, because today they can have the company of electronic devices, like the radio and the mobile phones, so, we can always keep in touch with the rest of the world community.
Anyhow, I think that I have said enough in this article, so, see you in my next article called, My life in the farms.
To see more click on this link, My farm life chapter.
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