ght differ. The
relentlessness of certain activities, such as feeding the stock, was the
same whether the farm boasted one cow or fifty. Thus distinctions
between general and specialized farmers were not so clear-cut in this
period. The following pages detail the work done on a small dairy farm,
yet the kinds and methods of activities also pertain to the farmer whose
acreage was devoted solely to general farming.

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." Another resident, Margaret Mary Lee, explained it more tersely:
"Cows and hens and milk trucks did not take holidays."[5] The first
milking was early in the morning and most farmers rose around four
a.m.[6] The men and any hired hands usually began milking around 4:30
a.m., while the women prepared breakfast. What might initially appear to
the outsider as a pleasing novelty was hard and demanding work. This was
especially true in the morning when both the new and often the
previous night's milk needed to be hauled to Herndon for the early train
into Washington. Ray Harrison, with his brother the owner of one of the
area's biggest herds, could milk a cow in six minutes--"quicker than a
lot people could do it"[7]--but even at this rate, milking his 80-odd
cows was a formidable undertaking. John Middleton, who lived down the
road from the Harrisons, estimated it took about 1-1/2 hours for seven
people to milk his herd of 40 cows; they barely finished in time for the
hired man, who took the milk to Herndon, to grab a sandwich and cup of
coffee to eat en route.[8]

[Illustration: Portrait of a confident and successful farmer. Holden
Harrison, c. 1935. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.]

[Illustration: The well-equipped dairy barn owned by the Harrison
Brothers, c. 1936. The Harrisons owned one of the county's largest
herds. Photo courtesy Holden and Ray Harrison.]

[Illustration: A Guernsey bull owned by Wilson D. McNair. Acquired in
1918, it was among th