We had dug a well where we got water for our use. We carried the water to the barn in the winter for the animals because it was too slippery and they would fall on the ice.
We had a dozen apple trees and we always had lots of apples to eat. Also, a big Bartlett pear tree and a larger cherry tree, black cherries and one red cherry tree, one crab apple tree, and two large grape vines, and they was loaded every year. Plenty of grape jelly for the winter or year around.
Pop also had 5 acres of garden and most of it red and yellow onions. Herman and I had to weed them. Some big piles of weeds.
But one year Gus Myers put a dam in the lake’s outlet and raised the lake too high and flooded the onion field, so no more onions to weed. We planted hay on the onion patch. How big the hay got. The Dailey boys always cut the hay for my father, and piled it all up for the winter. Pop sold some of it to the neighbors.
Herman and I used to go to Mud Pond and pick cranberries in the fall. There was loads of them. We picked 2 and 3 big feed bags full in a day. We got them home with the horse and wagon. Then we ran them through the fan mill to blow the chaff and leaves out. Pop sold them in
Port Jervis.—Ed Bosch, son of Wilhelm and Mary Maier Bosch.
—Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, p. 152–3.
