Running a farm
Snipes describes some of the practices on his maternal grandfather's farm: drying beef, making soap, plucking geese to make down pillows.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John W. Snipes, September 20, 1976. Interview H-0098-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- BRENT GLASS:
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Yes, right. Was your mother's father a farmer also?
- JOHN W. SNIPES:
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Yes sir.
- BRENT GLASS:
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About how big a farm did he have?
- JOHN W. SNIPES:
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Just a small one. Had about two hundred acres of land, and they just were
average. Had a few hogs, a few sheep, a few geese. They'd
kill a beef in the fall, and they'd hang it up and dry it way
back then. They made their own homity. They'd burn the ashes
and drip lye onto the ashes; and that was to take
the husks off of that hominy corn. Then they made their own lye soap.
And they picked their own geese, the down, the soft feathers from under
the geese to make the pillows. And they swapped their sheep wool for
yarn cloth. They'd carry this sheep wool up here to the old
tanning yard, the cowhide and the sheep wool up there, and
they'd swap cowhides for tanned leather. Then they treated
these feathers; I don't know what they did to them, but they
treated them anyway.
