Submitted by Leona Baker, Historical Society of Salisbury Township

Recollections of a historical society member

Neither my mother nor my father knew anything about farming when they bought a working farm in 1936. They made friends with the neighboring Italian truck farmers who took a delight in teaching both of them the intricate art of growing vegetables. A neighbor farmer also showed them how to first buy a cow, then care for it and milk it. Many of these activities fell to my mother since Pop was away at his factory job in Philadelphia most of the day.

In the first spring, the neighbor showed Pop how to prepare the fields with his second-hand tractor. (The neighbors still used a horse.) Later, the women showed Mother how to seed, weed and harvest the product of all that labor. Mother also read every government pamphlet available on how to grow and process vegetables. She even canned meat and milk. By the time World War II began, she had mastered cooking on the wood stove so well that we were taking baked goods to the market each Saturday, along with dressed chickens.

In the late 1930s, most of the surrounding farms did not have electricity. My father, a licensed electrician, was contracted with Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot's electrification program to begin to remedy this. Pinchot's administration had set up a work program that employed out-of-work young men for three month stints to do much-needed public services. This program was so successful that President Franklin D. Roosevelt took notice and worked with Pinchot to frame a new program on the same lines, first in New York, then nationally. Thus was formed the Works Progress Administration (WPA). My father had worked with the Pinchot Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program in Chester County, planting trees in the Malvern area. The CCC eventually became a national program also.

During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, a blackout was imposed every night, and wardens were appointed to check around the neighborhood for those who did not comply with the order. There was a real fear of German bombing such as England was having every night. My father was a warden, doing random drives about the countryside looking for those who used flashlights or lanterns to go to the outhouse or barn. Even cigarettes were considered potential target material.

Our house, with its six-over-six two-century-old windows, was soon outfitted with tar paper "shades" that could be turned up during the day and dropped at night. Then, heavy curtains were drawn across the whole window well for total darkness. The daily sun made the tar paper emit a very distinctive odor, which even in 2023, I can still remember.

Regrettably, when the peace treaty was finally signed, my father sold the farm, and we moved back to suburban Philadelphia.