TRANSCRIPT

Interview with Jean Peterson, Nee Nelles - Jean Describes Growing Up and Working on the Nelles and Kitchen Family Farms

It was very much a family thing, so we all felt that. I enjoyed working on the farm and I didn't mind doing whatever I was doing and so I went from just stamping baskets when I was a little kid, you know the baskets that the peaches would all get packed in and then I would go along and stamp them when I was maybe three, four, five years old and as I say by the time I was nine that, when you were nine, I am not sure if it was a local rule or a provincial rule or what it was but you were able to get out of school early if you signed up that you would be for sure thirteen weeks during the summer that you would be working on the farm. And we had to go, my father and I, and we went and had to talk to Mr. Mole who was the truant officer back then, and I didn't actually have anything to do with how they decided. I think he had to sign something and my father had to sign something. I am not sure about that, which meant that my father promised that if I got out of school early which is when I got out in May, that would mean that I would be working on the farm. And it was actually sort of humiliating because we (my parents) really wanted to obey the letter of the law. And if it was a bad day and I couldn't be working, they made me go to school, and I might be the only kid in the class because everybody else let their kids stay home. That was the Park School by the way; it was two rooms then at the Park School.