table occasion, for its
details stand out sharply in the minds of many. "After butchering each
year, Mother made ... buckwheat cakes to eat with fresh sausage,"
reminisced Margaret Peck. "Baked on a long black griddle, over a wood
stove, spread with homemade butter and topped with corn syrup, they were
the right beginning for a winter day."[42] For Floris residents, the
smells and tastes of a time seem to whirl the memory backward with
particular acuity.

Even in the hectic activity of harvest, a farmer was obliged to move
through the evening routine of milking, feeding and bedding his animals.
With these tasks completed, and a final check on the barns to see that
all was snug, the farmer's day was nearly complete by about 6:00. He ate
a hearty supper, then read _The Southern Planter_, and possibly mended
farm machinery or did a little work in the barn.[43] For those who arose
at 4:00 a.m. "in all kinds of weather," sleep came early and the house
was usually dark by 9:00 p.m.[44]

* * * * *

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. His family was an integral part of this scheme; far from
being removed from the household's form of support, they were intimately
bound up in it. Wife, husband, children and grandparents all contributed
in their distinct sphere. The term "family farm" was no idle
denomination, but a recognition of the importance the entire family
played in the smooth operation of the farm.

The relationship of a farm husband and wife was in many ways a truer
partnership than that of the urban marriage. "A farmer needs a wife like
he needs the rain," is an old farm saying, expounded for decades in the
farmer's almanacs. It has now been collaborated by rural sociologists to
show that farm efficiency was based largely on the partners' shared
duties.[45] The farmers themselves seemed to realize this. In a 1932
nationwide survey of factors which farmers regarded as most important to
their success, "co-operation of wives" was ranked second.[46]

The activities of rural men and women were co-equal, not identical.
Women rarely worked in the fields except in the press of harvesting wh