Monday, December 19, 2011
plowing with Cynthia and Jerry
My grandparents, Cynthia (Meerdink) and Jurrien Dykstra behind the plow with their horses.
Jerry would buy wild horses from Montana, break them into good farm horses, and sell them. He was known to be very good at this, and to be very good to the horses.
Cynthia walked to the fields with Jerry's lunch, and plowed while he ate so the horses would not rest too much and be too much to handle in the afternoon.
Cynthia would fall in love with these horses and deeply miss them when they were sold. This cycle played over and over for decades until tractors took over. Fifty years later she could name each horse in every photograph in her album.
Sioux County Iowa, about 1920.
What a sweet story!
ReplyDeleteI believe the front horse is wearing leather strings that keep the flies off when they jiggle with the horse's movement. The burlap on the hind horse serves the same purpose.
ReplyDeleteLynn...you should write a book. Fascinating pictures and stories!!
ReplyDeleteSharon