Without exception, every older person I’ve ever interviewed said they had daily chores and worked hard from the time they were as young as four years old. They also pointed out that these were not “busy work” kind of chores, but chores that were necessary things that had to be done every day to keep the farm or ranch or household running. Children were absolutely expected to contribute and work as hard as adults from what seems to us, like a very young age.
Ken, Gordon and Don Vosti told me they had daily chores from the time they were four (around 1932 for Ken). The first and biggest chore the youngest children had on the Vosti Ranch in Salida was taking care of the chickens. Every day the chickens needed fresh water and food. The boys also had to clean out the old, dirty straw in the coops, hose down the floors, and put fresh straw down in the pens.
Their most important job was checking all of the nests and carefully gathering the eggs.To do this, they crept into the chicken coop and felt under the chickens for the warm eggs in the nest. This was a fairly safe job…except for the rooster. Gordon remembered that one day, as he was carrying the bucket of eggs out of the coop, the rooster attacked him from behind and stabbed Gordon’s ankle with its spur. Gordon yelled, threw his arms up into the air, and all of the eggs flew out of the bucket and broke. He had a pretty bad puncture wound, but he fared better than the rooster. “The next day,” he said, “we had rooster for dinner.”
Lois Curtis Vosti had a small business selling eggs. Before the eggs could be sold, the boys had to “candle” each one. They put each egg, one by one, into a box with a light. This made the eggshell see-through and you could tell if it was a good egg or a bad egg. A good egg was one without any dark spots because people did not want dark spots in their eggs. After the eggs were candled, they were sorted into small, medium, and large size by weighing them on a little scale. The prices were different depending on the size of the egg. Chickens laid eggs every day, so all of these chores had to be done every day. The three Vosti boys were the main work force for the Vosti egg business!
Don, Ken and Gordon also remembered that as they got older, there were ranch chores before you went to school and then after you got home. On the weekend, there were some of the same chores and some different. This included weeding and watering the vegetable garden, picking beans, beets, carrots, onions, squash, and tomatoes, cleaning animal pens and feeding all of the animals, hauling and cleaning up junk, painting a building, helping to build something, clearing the pastures of invasive Johnson Grass…basically whatever their Dad told them to do. And of course they were also always expected to keep their room neat and put their clothes and toys away and help their mother when she needed it. Less you think these three boys were angels, they were not! I’ll save those stories for a different time, but I did ask them if they ever complained or didn’t do their chores?
“No” all three of them immediately answered. “You did what your parents told you to do because they needed your help, and that was just the way it was. All the kids we knew had chores and worked hard, and we would have been in serious trouble if we didn’t do as we were told. It didn’t event cross your mind not to do it.”
Although they did not get paid for work on the home ranch, they remembered that their Grandfather Curtis who lived nearby did pay them for work at his place. They each got 5 cents/day if they worked to weed and water Grandpa Curtis’ garden!
Lois Curtis Vosti also had chores from a very young age (she was born in 1906). She fed animals, gathered eggs and took care of the chickens. The family had cows and a small dairy. Her brothers milked the cows and Lois remembered that one of her first jobs when she was very little was to wash the separators that separated the milk from the cream. Another job she had was leading the horse by the bridle and keeping the horse and wagon in place while hay was loaded into the barn (she was about 9-10 years old when she started doing this).
From the time they could walk and talk, the girls in the family were also expected to help their mother (Bertha Eveland Curtis) every day with what Lois remembered as a never ending round of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, ironing and any other household chores. She said her mother was by far the hardest working person in their family and the girls were trained to be like their mother.
On the 30 acre Curtis ranch in Turlock, they grew alfalfa, cantaloupes, and watermelons .One job Lois remembered very well was helping in the fields. She and her mother worked to help plant the cantaloupes and also to harvest them. Then they’d work together to pack the crates. They belonged to an “association” that had a special label. Lois stuck the labels on the ends of the crates, then attached the two ends to the wooden frame, then filled in the sides with slats. She said she turned the crate side by side and tacked three slats on each of the four sides and on the bottom of the crate. Then the crates were set on a slanted table and her mother packed the cantaloupes into the crate.
The cantaloupes were sorted into jumbo, standard, and pony size. Each size went into a different kind of crate. All the cantaloupes were in a big bin and Lois’ mother could pick one up and immediately know what size it was without measuring it at all. Lois also stuck little round stickers on each cantaloupe as it went into the crate. Once the crate was full, Lois tacked the slats on top and the crates were ready to go to market.
My ancestors worked much harder as children and in very different ways than I, or my children, did. Yet none of the people I’ve interviewed seemed to feel they were asked to do too much. Granted my very small sample of ancestors were not being asked to work 12 hour days in factories, or steel mills, or coal mines…they no doubt would have had different stories to tell if that were the case. But for these ancestors, the work they were asked to do was seen as positive. Ken Vosti said, “We learned to do a job and we were expected to do it well and do it on our own. It made us independent.” From a young age, they were asked to be reliable and responsible and to contribute to their families in meaningful ways. They believed the chores they were asked to do built character, self confidence, and resiliency and prepared them well for life. I think they were right!
Lois Curtis Vosti – Curtis Family Tree #1
Sources:
Vosti, Kenneth, Gordon & Donald; Tell Us A Story Grandpa! 2003; Palo Alto, CA
Vosti, Lois Curtis; Personal Interview