My Family's History of Farming

Me and my grandpa in Kentucky

My grandfather grew up on a family farm in rural Kentucky where his parents and siblings produced what they needed for their subsistence. They grew corn, peanuts, tobacco, sugar cane, beans, grapes, apples, peaches, strawberries, and a variety of vegetables in the garden. They canned and dried food for the winter, made their own clothing, and made their own soap from animal fat. I've been reading my great-grandmother's memoire, and I'm amazed by how many things they knew how to do. My dad says that my great-grandmother was like a self-learned botanist. She knew so much about plants, trees and gardening.

Pages from my great-grandmother's memoire

In her memoire, my great-grandmother talks about "Our way of life." She says,

"We raised or made what we used or needed. My daddy hauled wheat to mill for our flour. We did buy lamp oil, salt, and sugar by the barrel. We canned or dried beans, canned tomatoes, black berries, and made jam and preservatives by the half gallon.... We even made our own soap. We cut skins off our bacon and other meat scraps, put them in an old lard can until we got enough to make a kettle of soap... we treasured our meat scraps as we had to make enough for all our laundry and sometimes our toilets and shampoo soap."

I've become more curious about my grandparents' lives and upbringings. This Christmas while I'm visiting home, we went to see my great aunt (my grandfather's sister). Since my grandparents passed away, now she is the person we are closest to from my dad's side of the family. Recently my dad helped my aunt write her own memoire of stories and life experiences. She seems to have an infinite supply of stories. Today she told us that she and my grandpa would find rabbit tobacco growing wild on the farm when they were teenagers. They would crush it and roll their cigarettes. She smiled and said, "Momma and daddy never found out."

Out to eat with in Kentucky with my great aunt Eloise and my brother

My great aunt has many fond memories of the farm, but when she was an adolescent, she was ready to leave the farm and move to town. She is a lively, social person and was excited to be around more people and make her own money. Everyone in town knows her. Living on the farm was hard work and little pay. My grandfather eventually became a dentist and moved to town too. However, he always had a farm and after his days in the office, he would grow corn, tobacco, okra, tomatoes, strawberries, etc. My grandfather said that if he could've earned enough money from farming, he would've just farmed.

My grandfather holding my dad when he was a baby

It's difficult to overstate how different our upbringings were and how much the world changed from their generation to mine. I know my grandparents were happy that we had more opportunities and were able to get good educations, but I think we missed out on learning more from them.

While my grandparents ate mostly what was in season or what they canned and preserved, we had access to almost whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. However, the current global food system that allows us to eat ultra-processed and out of season foods shipped from across the world is based on an unsustainable systems that is contributing significantly to climate change, biodiversity loss, unjust working conditions, health problems among farmworkers, and many other issues. In just two generations we became so disconnected from knowing anything about agriculture and our natural environment.

This change in generations reflects changes in the world-- globalization, free trade agreements, agricultural policies and subsidies, etc. U.S. agricultural and trade policies have changed rural ways of life not just in the U.S. but around the world. While some of my cousins stayed in rural Kentucky, no one is a farmer today. Generational small-scale farming is very rare in the U.S. now.

Lots of corn and soy bean fields in Russellville, Kentucky, December 2024

I don't want to romanticize my great grandparents' lives as farmers. I know that my grandparents experienced a lot of hardship and poverty growing up as subsistence farmers. And it's also crucial to not leave out that the history of white settler farmers and homesteaders in the US has its dark history of racism, colonialism, gender inequality, and displacing a native population and their traditions. It's extremely problematic to frame the small farms and homesteads as a "better" time in the past. The organizations and projects I look for continue to give different ideas of what alternatives might look like, which prioritize black and indigenous-led initiatives for food justice in the US and abroad.

My brother and I on my grandpa's farm in Kentucky