[for fun] that much. My father thought the horses had done a day’s work: they were entitled to their rest.

We were to gather up the eggs — help with anything. We would milk the cows or go and get the cows, bring them down to a brook to water them. We didn’t have a very large herd like they have today. And we’d separate the milk, feed the calves, and take in the wood — fill the woodbox.

I liked to pick berries in the fields and in the woods. There were wild raspberries: we picked bucketsful. And we were very proud of them.

It didn’t take very long. Three or four of us would go together and probably fill a two-and—a—half—gallon pail and bring them home and my mother would make preserves for the winter, or raspberry vinegar or something. We’d take our lunch and go for the day. And we’d rest, and listen to the birds and the locusts and things. We’d go for a couple of miles to look for raspberries. Where they cut down trees and the branches were there, they often grew up in the discards. There was any amount of the wild raspberries.

Later on in life, we had a little bog beside our farm where wild cranberries grew in large numbers. And we had a small orchard. We were never without fruit of some kind. We would go miles with a horse and wagon — we made a picnic day on that — to get blueberries.

But we had no way of storing this. It all had to be preserved. There was no refrigeration at all. They had to harvest the ice off the ponds. We had an ice house where ice blocks were put, and then we had an ice box. Of course, underneath there you had the cream and butter and meat, probably. The butcher would come around each week and you’d get your meat. You could get along like that. In later years, my husband canned a lot of the things that we had, that we grew off the farm, like chickens and turkeys and lobster.

Education

I’d still be going to school ifI had a chance. I think we do learn as long as we live. Ienjoyed school very much. Actually, I ran away to school. When my sisters would go in the morning, I would watch my chance to follow them, and my mother would have to take a baby in her arms and chase me down the road. The first teacher that taught me...told my mother to leave me with her any time. And she’d teach with me in her arms. I can remember that. I’d fall asleep in her arms while she was sitting down teaching the children.

Annie Gillis 15 7