Grammie Lil

This is my Grammie Lil in 1943. At the time she and my grandpa Herb were living and working on a farm in Woodsville. I don't know if she had just finished haying with grandpa, or if she just decided to pose on the tractor with their dog Tippy, but I love this picture, it speaks to me in so many ways about a part of her I never got to know.

By the time I was born my grandpa was retired from Norton Pike, a stone (sharpening) making factory, my grammie still worked there, for her own money, that she usually spent on me, and they lived in a rented apartment. Farming was WAY out of the picture. My grandpa used to talk about what hard work farming was, but I don't really remember my gram talking much about it. She would tell me stories about growing up before cars and electricity had come to every house in northern NH, I knew how much she loved animals but she never said she regretted not living on a farm again; even though I asked my parents and even my gram, repeatedly for a horse, pony or a farm animal of ANY kind ( I was desperate to live on a farm..ANY farm..and ANY farm animal would do...chicken, goose, duck, cow...I didn't care).

This picture, though, shows me a happy time in her life...where, even if the work was really hard, she still had a smile and a sense of humor for the camera....and whomever was behind it. Maybe my love affair with farm life comes from her after all.