The Truth About a Farmer's Wife by Someone Who Knows, March 1, 1922

Farmer’s Wife Is Handicapped. . . Keeps Informed by Reading Headlines of County Paper—All Work and No Pay

Mr. Editor:

Having recently seen several articles in the newspapers in regard to live on the farm written by men, I think it is time for the farmer’s wife to get in a few words, as it is contrary to human nature for us to remain silent and let the men do all the talking.

Having lived on the farm for over 30 years, I think I am sufficiently informed on the subject to speak for the farm women generally.

The greatest drawback to the life of the women on the farm is the lack of cash income. Any woman who is not afraid of hard work, by cultivating several acres of vegetables, raising hogs and poultry, and paying special attention to the milch cows, in addition to canning everything in sight from May until September, can feed her family, but none of these things bring in any money under the present marketing conditions.

Practically all of the ways of adding to the family income, practiced by our town sisters, are closed to us. We cannot take in boarders or roomers on the farm for the simple reason that there are none to take. No matter how cleverly we sew, there is nothing in that line for no one on the farm hires sewing, and so on down the line.

Another deplorable condition is that owing to in present labor, after lack of money with which to make the best of ourselves, the women of the farm are old beyond their years, and their ward-robe is about as up-to-date and attractive as a last year’s bird nest. For this state of affairs we are ridiculed and considered too careless for words.

The average farmer’s wife has about as much opportunity for recreation and improvement as the farmer’s Ford car, which is used for anything about the place from marketing the tobacco and live stock to carrying the family to church on Sunday morning.

Vacation to us means the time of year when the days get too long and hot for our city relatives and they come out to the “dear old farm” to rest up a while and we sweat extra over the kitchen range cooking the things we have laid by for the family use and murdering all the perfectly innocent “frying size” in order to make their stay more pleasant.

The farm woman usually keeps herself informed by reading the headlines of the county paper while nursing the baby, who like the poor, is always with us. I often wonder what would become of the future generations if the birth control movement should ever reach the rural districts.

Of course conditions on the farm are not as bad as they were many years ago We do not have to spin and weave as our grandmothers did, neither are we harassed by the servant problem, or panicky for fear the washerwoman will strike. The servants, washerwoman and yours truly are one and the same.

Under the improved conditions of the present day our children are enjoying farm more advantages than we did in our youth. For instance daughter’s beau dries a roadster and they go to town to see the latest movie agony and have an ice cream soda afterwards. In our girlhood days if our Lochinvars owned a horse and buggy, with or without rubber tires, as his circumstances permitted we attended a Sunday school picnic and a county fair the same summer we were as happy as a pup with two tags to wag.

--A Farmer’s Wife.

From the Danbury Reporter, Wednesday, March 1, 1922