Farm life
Showing
1 - 20
of 53
, query time: 0.03s
Format:
Voice Recording
Albert Rood describes the life and community involvements of his step-father William Weiser (nephew of William Moyer), his childhood in the Third Fruitridge area and the people who lived there, and stealing watermelons and floating them in the Grand Valley Canal. He also talks about his education at Mesa Junior College, and his work in the field for a Bureau of Entomology laboratory dedicated to eradicating a sugar beet pest. The interview was conducted...
Format:
Voice Recording
To mark the centennial celebration of the town of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1981, the Mesa County Oral History Project wrote and recorded several radio plays about local history. Beginning on September 26, 1981, local radio stations KSTR, KREX-AM, KREX-FM, and KMSA broadcast the plays. Authors of the plays used interviews recorded by the Mesa County Oral History Project as inspiration. This archival recording contains the play Immigrants and Homesteaders.
This...
Format:
Voice Recording
Martha Gardner talks about her childhood in the small towns of Western Colorado, about farm life in Eastern Utah, and about Grand Junction. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
Format:
Voice Recording
Lina Mae (Smith) Biggs discusses the history of her pioneer family in Grand Junction, including their role in cultivating apples in First Fruitridge, and her father Silmon Smith’s life as a prominent water law attorney who helped draw up the Colorado River Compact. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
*Photograph...
Format:
Voice Recording
John Collier explains his childhood growing up as a homesteader in Pinon Mesa and the Glade Park area, and living in a tent until a cabin could be built. He talks about how his father made money in real estate, farming hay, selling horses, selling lumber for corrals, raising sheep and cattle, and skating on the frozen Redlands Canal. He mentions important landmarks and buildings in and around Grand Junction, Colorado. The interview was conducted by...
Format:
Voice Recording
Sisters Ana Mcginley and Mae Plunkett describe in detail their household life and childhood growing up on a homestead in the Hunter District of Mesa County, Colorado, with an account of household furnishings, chores, and leisure activities. They also talk about the growth of Grand Junction and of North Avenue as a main thoroughfare, time spent on the Colorado National Monument, Mesa County Fairs, and the Interurban rail line. The interview was conducted...
Format:
Voice Recording
Mary Plaisted talks about growing up in the Milldale area around the sugar beet factory in Grand Junction, Colorado, and about the brothels and red-light district nearby. She describes having to beg and take odd cleaning and sewing jobs to support she and her children, and the kind strangers that helped her. She mentions the many places she lived in Grand Junction, the floods common in the Riverside neighborhood, and living in a close-knit Italian...
Format:
Voice Recording
Mary Colosimo talks about the life of her Italian immigrant family on a truck farm in the Pomona area of Mesa County, Colorado. She also discusses her marriage to railroad man Charles Colosimo, his career with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, including his stints as a call-boy and an engineer, railroad disciplinary measures, and train accidents. Lorene Roice talks about what brought her to Grand Junction at the end of World War II, her husband’s...
Format:
Voice Recording
Alice Johnson discusses the pioneering history of her family in Kansas. She then talks about growing tomatoes and working in the greenhouses with her husband on their family farm in Mesa County, about attending Ross Business College, jobs she held subsequent to her education, and her friends and social life. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the...
Format:
Voice Recording
Anna Cunningham describes her family’s journey out West from Connecticut, and their pioneer life living on a homestead near Meeker. She also talks about her life living in Mesa County. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
Format:
Voice Recording
Evie Smith describes growing up on a pineapple plantation on the Island of Oahu in Hawaii that was run by her father. She talks about the different ethnic groups inhabiting camps on the plantation, including Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese workers. She speaks about the US military’s war games that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor in the week prior to December 7, 1941. She describes the bombing of Hawaii by Japanese forces and the deaths of civilians...
Format:
Voice Recording
James Brouse discusses moving and going to school in Glade Park, Colorado as a young boy in 1915. He tells tales of cowpunching in the canyons near Westwater, homesteading, the difficulties of dry farming, and the methods and difficulties of transportation into town from up on Glade Park. He also talks about local murders, sheep and cattlemen wars, and the history of different schools in the area. His wife Ellen (Morse) Brouse, longtime Mesa County...
Format:
Voice Recording
In an interview from May 14, 1981 (audio only, no transcript), Basil T. Knight talks about his youth in Michigan, meeting his wife’s family in Palisade, Colorado and ultimately moving there, operating a fruit farm, and becoming a lifelong teacher and school administrator. He explains the mechanisms that originally funded the many smaller school districts on the Western Slope, including taxes on railroads, and the reasons for the consolidation that...
Format:
Voice Recording
Lois Long describes the homestead she grew up on near Loma. She remembers living in a tent and then a pre-cut house, and drinking ditch water. She recalls her father and uncle moving the Valley View School to north of the Colorado River in the 1920’s, and the school bus that was sometimes a horse-drawn cart. Leland Buniger talks about his childhood in Grand Junction, Fruita and Loma. He describes farming potatoes, beans and hay. He speaks about...
Format:
Voice Recording
Reba Ball talks about her upbringing in Palisade, Colorado, the history of Vineland, the ferry over the Colorado River, and the Seventh Day Adventist Church and school. She remembers growing up on a peach farm and aspects of peach farming, such as picking and shipping peaches. She discusses smudging to prevent frost, diseases and pests common to peaches, and pesticides. Harvey Ball speaks about his career as a manager of grocery stores, including...
Format:
Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader talks about the New Deal and its effect on her farm in Loma, Colorado. She then describes at length the migration of Ute tribal members from the Ouray/Silverton area to Eastern Utah every fall in the early Twentieth century, their camping near Rader's childhood home in Kannah Creek, and her observations of the Ute people. She also discusses her family's pioneer history in the Whitewater/Kannah Creek area, her time teaching in rural...
Format:
Voice Recording
John Brach, the son of Italian immigrants, talks about his family moving from Aguilar, Colorado to Loma so that they could work in agriculture instead of the coal mines. He speaks about relying on ditch water for drinking water, using carbide lights, and a coal stove. He remembers people who came to Loma as part of a Federal resettlement program during the Dust Bowl, including the De Kruger, Bittle and Beede families. He recalls other residents and...
Format:
Voice Recording
Lucille Mahannah, an early education and civic leader in Mesa County, describes her early life on the Hunter Ranch, a ranch established by her family in what later became the Hunter District. She also talks about her career in education as a teacher and as the Mesa County Superintendent of Schools. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Note:...
Format:
Voice Recording
Marie (Becker) Young talks about her experience living in Germany for a year, and the early days of fruit farming in Mesa County, Colorado. Marie also discusses the early history of Orchard Mesa, her social and work life as a teenager, the business of cattle driving and roundups with her husband in Utah, and her life as a homemaker. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the...
Format:
Voice Recording
Ruth Hoffman talks about her teen and young adult years spent packing fruit for Cross Orchards and other farms in Mesa County, Colorado. She describes the work involved in fruit packing, lighting smudge pots, picking fruit, the change in the kinds of jobs women did on the farm over time, and life on the farm. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of the Mesa County Public Library and the Museum of Western...
