In the 20's and 30's I grew up as one of ten children and was reared on a big beautiful farm in the foothills of Midway, Utah. It was the most glorious place for a child to learn and love. On this farm we had a delicious orchard along the hillside, and another by the warm stream gliding through our property. There were cherries, Italian prunes, blue damson plums, potowatomee plums, bautlet pears, wealthy apples, and yellow transparent apples- just to name a few. Regal shade trees dotted the vast hillside, softly flittering their leaves. The flowers in Mother's garden, seemed to almost sing their colors. Thousands of delighted bees, swarmed our blossom covered orchards. A few steamy hot pots poked their heads out of the ground. Near the farm, there were swamps and mud holes galore. There were dusty trails perfect for childrens' bare feet. Two big canals ran through the farm, north to south, and were lined on either side by Balm of Gilead trees. There were all kinds of interesting brush and herbs everywhere. Snakes, squirrels, badgers, chipmunks, weasels, and many more wild animals lived on our farm with us. We also had cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, dogs, and cats. To me, our farm was a garden of Eden. The old family home One of my earliest memories of living on the farm was when we moved our house. My father built an extension on the back of our house to enclose one of the hot pots. These hot pots were where hot springs bubbled up out of the ground and over the centuries created a big round deposit of limestone with a hole in the center. The water was perfect for swimming in. We got our very own indoor swimming pool by moving the house over one of these pots. After a while, though, the steam and water started rotting the wood, and our house started to sink. Dad put the house on large logs, and hooked them up to a team of horses. Our house was pulled three or four hundred feet to the east. I was tiny, and our house looked as big as a mountain; it was very exciting. Hot Pot with a second hotpot in the background. There was a swamp above the lower canal where we spent many happy hours playing in mud holes. With a little stomping and mixing, we made the most wonderful mud bath you could ever imagine. We also made a mud slide by carrying mud onto the grass, making it slippery. We took off all of our clothes and played for hours. What a sight we must have been! When we got tired of playing in the mud, we washed off in the canal filled with icy cold water.

We floated down this canal many times, and Dad saw the need for us to have a place to swim. He and my brothers dug out a pool in the middle of the small stream. How well I remember the blasting rocks flying high over the house. After the smoke cleared all of us children would rush up to see what damage had been done. Then the horse and scoop shovel were taken down into the hole and the loose dirt and rocks were dragged up. When it was emptied, everyone stood back, and the dynamite would explode a little more rock out of the mountain. This was repeated until our pool was done. My father's parents lived on our farm until their death, and they too had a pool. Theirs was smaller though: eight feet long, three feet wide, and about one foot deep. These pools were a boon for tired, hot bodies after a long hard day of work. Dad used to catch squirrels and put them in homemade cages. He also made a wheel for them to run on. When they discovered that their weight made the wheel turn, they would run for hours. This was quite an unusual spectacle, and people from the town would come to see them. Visitors were a rare occasion on the Lundin farm, and my mother always made sure they left with their arms full of her beautiful flowers. My mother's flowers were the best in the valley, especially her gladiolas. Every year at the fair, she took first place for them. Schneitters Hot Pots Resort bought her flowers for their dinning room tables. We not only sold flowers, but vegetables and honey too. We raised acres of peas, and every week picked several hundred pound sacs to sell in Park City. We peddled other vegetables at the market, which Mother worked very hard to get ready. We had six bee hives and sold all the excess honey. Sometimes we even sold one of our cows. With the money we earned from these sales, we bought very little. Every Fall, each girl picked out fabric for a dress and a new pair of shoes from the Sears catalog. If the shoes we picked ended up being too small, we had to wear them anyway. The dress sewn from the fabric and the shoes had to last us the whole year. Mother also sewed clothes for us, made from flour sacks. We took the wheat we had grown down to the flour mill and traded it for sacks of flour. We knew a lady who made her clothes out of flour sacks, too. When she bent over in her garden, her dress would fly up in the back, and you could see Turkey Red Flour, written across her bottom!

Occasionally we spent some money in town, to watch a movie, but mostly, we entertained ourselves. Every night after all the work was done, my family gathered on the porch and sang together. It was beautiful We did not need to buy much because our farm was basically self-sufficient. We made 25 gallons of delicious plum preserves out of our many plums. A favorite treat of ours was the skimmed cream from our cows' milk mixed with the preserves. We called it mousse and it was absolutely delicious. It was heavenly on Mother's fresh bread. She baked eight or nine loaves every other day. In the summer, we would go out in the barn with a fresh slice of bread, bury our noses in the cream, and eat and drink until our hearts were content. We were poor, but so rich! We grew and harvested all the fruit we ate. In the Fall, we came home from school, kicked off our shoes, and changed out of our nice clothes. We all had to go to the orchard to pick apples. It seemed there was a never-ending supply of them. We were all very agile and could climb trees like monkeys. Our feet, sore from being in those new shoes all day, were relieved to be out of their prison, and clung to the smooth bark of the trees. When that was done, we would have to peel them. There were nights we stayed up until 2:00 a.m. peeling apples. The yellow-transparent apples were made into delicious apple sauce. The Macintosh apples were dried on the tin roof of our shop. We stored them through the winter by covering the dried apples with a thick layer of straw, then a layer of apples, and another layer of straw, ect. We preserved hundreds of bushels of Macintoshes this way. The Wealthy apples were made into cider. We made at least fifty gallons of cider every year. We had a siphon hose that extended out the top of the barrel. We would drink our fill of cider from the hose. My mother was the one who enjoyed this the most. She was born and spent most of her childhood in Switzerland. She was accustomed to a cellar filled with red wine. Many times she referred to this delicacy and found cider a substitute for it. Once the cider got a little too hard and my mother drank a little too much. Father, seeing that she was drunk, and that the cider was too old, threw it out to the pigs. They also got drunk, and even fainted. We thought they died and were a little concerned. What kind of cider kills a pig? Their tails started switching and their ears flinched, so we knew they were still alive. What a relief.

The pigs were our main meat source. We also ate some of the chickens we raised for eggs. We stored the meat by salting it and then smoking it in the smokehouse. My father was very ingenious and built everything we needed, including the smokehouse. Our vegetable garden was at least three or four acres. We grew cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, carrots, beets, and other vegetables. The garden was a lot of work. Every morning, us children had a row to weed before we could go play. We put burnt wood chips by the cabbage to keep the worms away. We had a lot of cabbage and made it into sauerkraut. As we prepared to make it, the smallest child went to the river and scrubbed their feet. This was not such an easy task after running free as the wind, barefoot all summer. Another child went to Maria Mitchell's to borrow the cabbage shredder. When all the cabbage was shredded, it was dumped in a fifty gallon barrel with a little salt. The child with the clean feet stomped on the cabbage, squishing it as much as possible. Salt was added accordingly, and soon the cabbage was compacted very tightly into the barrel. The ones not actively involved in the "squishing," had the fun of tasting it as they went. Mother was the official taster, of course. Mother had so many skills. When we were sick, she gave us chamomile tea. Catnip is a natural sedative, and Mother gave it to the babies when they were colicky. These herbs and more grew naturally on our farm. She made candy from the honey, cheese from the milk, and even soap. She used that soap to clean our clothes and us. Scrubbing on a board for 12 people is a lot of work all by itself, and she did so much more than just that. My mother kept the entire farm running in order. I never appreciated her until it was too late. We were perfectly happy living on the farm, and were very independent. I do not even really remember the depression, because it did not effect us that much. Buying a dress and shoes once a year is not that much spending. My father farmed with the horses pulling tools; no machinery. We always had enough food, but we had to work very hard for what we had. My family was not very well off, and we did not have a lot of worldly luxuries, but I think I had the best childhood a girl could have. To me, the farm was heaven, and I would not want to have grown up anywhere else.