Elizabeth Brown Pryor

“ Perpetuity—a continual need to perform certain tasks and watch over specific events on a daily basis—was the most fundamental aspect of farming. The farmer's day began with such an interminable chore: milking the cows. This twice-daily task was, of course, particularly important on dairy farms and its relentlessness is often the first aspect to be mentioned in any farming recollection. "When you have dairy cows," Joseph Beard, who grew up in the Floris area, acknowledged, "that's a 365-day proposition regardless of whether you're sick or anything like that." ”

“ In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. ”

“ In its seasonal cycle of activity, the close and interdependent family relationships, and the singular self-motivation of the farmer, the early 20th century farm carried on many of the traditions of the past. Except for the change from slave to free labor and the marginal use of mechanical equipment, these elements made up a world in which the farmer of 1890, 1870, or even 1850 would have felt comfortable. But running concurrently with these expected qualities of rural life were major changes which jarred and fractured the constant trends of farming. ”

“ One irate farmer angrily stated to the editor of the Herndon News-Observer that the large retail trucks held all the available spaces while the area farmers "stand out doors (sic) all day and part of the night, trying to eke out money for taxes, interest and other arbitrary costs." The streets were filthy, he continued, and the market protection itself inadequate. "The only pretense of shelter barely covers the sidewalk, leaving the farmer's truck or car outdoors where produce is in danger from heat, cold, or rain." ”

“ It was with a start, therefore, that people began to realize, soon after the turn of the century, that rural population was in fact decreasing, and that farm life fell short of the rosy dream of pastoral independence so cherished by Americans. ”

“ An additional responsibility was that of caring for children, but in the farm family this was more clearly a joint obligation of the father and mother than in families in which the male parent left home to work. Too, children were more closely tied to the family as a working unit; they felt both the necessity of aiding their parents with the running of the farm and the pride of contributing in a real sense to the family's well-being. Of course, farm children attended school, but they also shared the pattern of their parents' life. ”

“ Nature was the farmer's clock, and though he bid the land to produce what he desired, it was the earth which fixed his hours and chores. From this close association with nature came a continuity and special bond between farmers, which defied both time and place.
Although the early years of the 20th century heralded a new era of specialization in agriculture, the farmers of Fairfax County persisted in executing the varied functions of general farming. Dairying might be the emphasis on many farms, but it was rarely pursued at the expense of production of grain or food for home consumption. ”

“ Change in attitude, technology or society occurs during all periods, but the 1920s and 1930s were a particularly dynamic time in the field of agriculture. Advances in the understanding of plant biology, animal husbandry and soil conservation, together with higher living standards through rural electrification and improved communications, were a cause for optimism about the future of the family farm. Yet these advances irrevocably altered the familiar rural life patterns. To maintain his own station within this changing world, the farmer's outlook and methods would also have to change. ”

“ The model farm at Frying Pan Park is a representation of this changing way of life. It recognizes especially the role of the family subsistence farmer and his contributions to the economy and solidarity of Fairfax County's rural communities. Although this study focuses on the institutions and personalities of the Floris-Herndon area, it is meant to be generic in scope. Dairying, which forms one emphasis of this monograph, was widespread in the area, and though each district had its distinctive elements, the underlying social values and farming methods were consistent throughout the county. ”

“ Expensive machinery needed to be purchased for only one kind of production, the farmer could cut down the vast influx of information to only those subjects which directly interested him, and the methods of mass production, first pioneered in factories, could be applied to his concentrated effort. Moreover, specialization in market commodities produced the cash which had become ever more important to buy equipment, pay taxes and purchase manufactured goods which were no longer made on the farm. ”

“ Aside from the need to influence milk and produce prices, two chief concerns of the farmer's organizations were the establishment of electricity throughout the county and the improvement of the area's roads. The move towards rural electrification was a popular one across the nation, cited continually as the one item most useful to the farmer for advancing mechanization and of greatest importance in raising the farm family's standard of living. ”

“ A study of small truck farms in the Washington, D.C. area showed that despite intensive labor and a double cropping system, a farmer was often clearing only $500 annually by raising produce for the city markets. The study concluded that it took "the best management and a considerable knowledge of farm practice and markets" to till such a farm to advantage. On the smallest farms it was only the exceptional farmer who could make more than a living without any outside source of income. [129]
Marketing the produce was a special problem of truck farming. ”

“ This too encouraged community cohesiveness, as all parts of the society were included in its rituals, and children learned at an early age that they played an active role in the neighborhood's well-being; there was a place for them within the community which would last the length of their life. Strong evidence of this community identity is seen in the large numbers of Floris young people who, even in the face of urban opportunities, elected to stay on the family farm, or chose careers in the agriculture-related fields of veterinary medicine, extension work or fish and wildlife protection. ”

“ One Maryland farmer who marketed his products in the same areas as Fairfax dairymen, stated the case emphatically. "What does a man want a cow for? Milk! And to get milk you've got to have a ... female animal with some size to her, strong bone, a good bag and a big barrel—a real machine ... producing quality milk." [107] A Fairfax County poultry raiser concurred. Complaining to the editor of the Fairfax Herald in 1926, he wrote:
As is now being done, fowls are being judged by the show standard rather than from a utility standpoint. ”

“ The rural family raised livestock for their own use, but principally for the market, and favored draft horses over tractors, mules or oxen to power farm equipment. This farmer's time was spent on a myriad of duties and details—his function was not yet totally specialized—ranging from butchering hogs to building chicken coops to thinning corn. ”

“ As Joseph Beard remarked: "There are some people who have very little money, but have the ability to use it in the right place at the right time and get a great deal more out of it than others. I suspect that the person that had the highest standard of living with what they had to do with was respected more than any one thing." [274]
Farmers from the Floris area also held private entertainments, such as the Peck family reunion of 1927, or the bridge parties which became so fashionable in the late 1920s and 1930s. [275] On rare occasions they travelled to Washington to see a show or to shop. ”

“ The county's farmers had spent much of the inter-war period adjusting to the new agricultural modes, but they could not adapt to the burgeoning metropolitan area's desire for expansion. The construction of Dulles International Airport in the late 1950s further depleted the county's agricultural areas, wiping out both the Willard community and much of the farmland around Floris. Even those farmers who had noticed the trends of twenty years felt a nagging sense of loss and resentment at the passing of their traditional way of life. ”

“ One of the most important changes to influence farming in the years between the two world wars was the new interest the government took in agriculture and its problems. For many years the nation had considered agriculture to be not just the fundamental, but the ideal way of life. ”

“ Improved roads meant improved markets, and increased contact with outside communities but, along with the advent of the radio, they resulted in a homogenizing of city and country ways, and lured many away from the farm. Concern for rural welfare prompted all levels of government to design programs to aid the farmer—programs which indeed furthered agriculture, but at the price of well-meaning interference in a previously highly individual sphere. ”

“ With less cash available, many farmers bought poor quality bulls rather than invest the money for a pure-bred animal. [153]
Notwithstanding these setbacks, dairy farming continued to be Fairfax County's predominant (and most prestigious) industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, it flourished well into the 1950s and was eclipsed only by the overwhelming spread of urban workers into the area in the second half of the century. Until this development occurred, it was the dairy farmer's life which set the style and pace of life in the county. ”

“ When automobiles became more common on the county's thoroughfares, they increased the problem of dust, deeply worn grooves and splashing muddy water. At the same time they pointed up the necessity for improvement. The early solid tire vehicles could barely operate in the thick red Virginia mud, thus greatly retarding transportation of produce and milk. "If you had three drops of rain on the road, [the tires] started spinning and you couldn't go anywhere much without chains," recollected one early farmer. "Every truck carried a set of tire chains in the event it rained. ”

“ One such farmer, Ernest E. Webb, struggled to maintain his children by selling vegetables in the city market. Biweekly he took his goods by wagon across the low, unstable Chain Bridge and along Canal Road to the markets in Washington, but for this long, exhausting trip his profits were slim: "We made enough to come back home, feed the horses, and feed ourselves a little for another trip." [75] To eke out an existence, most blacks had to supplement any farming income they might have by working as agricultural laborers. ”

“ The fruits of the year's labor came not only from the hay fields but from garden and orchard, whose abundance had to be gathered, preserved and stored in the late summer season. Fairfax County had once been a major truck farming section but the onslaught of insects and competition from large commercial orchards (such as those in the Shenandoah Valley) had relegated this produce to the realm of home use. The A. S. Harrison farm included plum, apple, peach and cherry trees and Margaret Mary Lee recalled that cherries, pears and apples grew in her family's orchard. ”

“ Poultry keeping also fell to the farmer's wife. There were a sizable number of commercial poultry farms in the county—it was in fact the area's second most important farm industry—but most dairy and general farms kept just enough for their own use. [55] Egg collecting, feeding and cleaning of the chicken house and yard, even killing, dressing and plucking the poultry were done by female members of the farm family. Thrifty women saved the feathers for pillows and coverlets and nearly all sold their excess eggs to the "hucksters" who travelled from farm to farm buying surplus goods. ”

“ More cash was needed to buy manufactured goods as the farm became less self-supporting, but prices for raw materials remained low during the agricultural slump of the 1920s and 1930s. "Agriculture was much less distressed when the farm was a self-supporting home," reflected the Washington Star:
But when factories began producing commodities in quantity the farmer could buy them easier than he could make them at home. ”

“ One-tenth of the farms enjoyed the use of a tractor and 25% had a radio. The average capital holding on land and buildings was $8,229, and the Fairfax County farmer netted something less than $1,000 income annually. [1]
These figures give a skeleton picture of Fairfax County's most prominent citizen in the period between the two World Wars; when the statistics are translated in prose, his shadowy form gains weight. The farmer at this time was a small landowner, possessing a farm only as large as his own family and a few hired laborers could manage. ”

“ More crucial than the crash of 1929 to the farmer's well-being in northern Virginia were two severe droughts, one in the late 1920s and the other in 1931. The latter was particularly harsh. Wheat planted in October did not come up until April, and one woman recalled that the cherry trees failed to blossom until the late fall. [212] Thousands of tons of hay and grain feeds had to be brought in from other parts of the country to feed the livestock, at enormous cost to the farmers. The combination of these unfortunate elements meant more mortgaged farms and tighter belts for the county's farmers. ”

“ Many of the laborers in the Floris area came from Willard, a community of both whites and blacks, just over the Loudoun County line. About 85% of Fairfax County's black population owned no land in 1934 and supported themselves solely by agricultural labor. [73] Unlike this large landless majority, many of Willard's families owned three to fifteen acres of land. Most of these families grew vegetables on their land and nearly all kept a cow. [74] A few black families tried to support themselves by truck gardening, a difficult task when competing with larger more economical farms. ”

“ The activities of rural men and women were co-equal, not identical. Women rarely worked in the fields except in the press of harvesting when they might drive a horse to pull up the hay fork—"what we've all done, I guess," agreed one group of Floris women. [47] They only occasionally aided the men in the barn. Edith Rogers remembered working with the stock as did Margaret Mary Lee, who helped with milking and also recalled washing the milk storage tank and other equipment. This pleased the local milk inspector who told her, "When women are in the barn, I know the equipment is clean." ”

“ A Floris Milk Producers Association was founded in 1925 to operate and repair milk collecting trucks and the Dairy Marketing Company and Fairfax County Farmer's Service Company (which featured cooperative buying of seed) started a few years later. None of these bodies remained permanent features of the area's organizations, but all helped the farmer to see the advantage of collective effort. The professional attitude adopted by the farmers' groups is evident in the stringent standards required in their service contracts. ”