The Dust Bowl
Life During the Dust Bowl The Great Depression which began in 1929 and ended in 1939 was the worst economic disaster in history. There were many factors playing into the cause of the depression but here I am going to talk about the effects of the depression. What became known as the dust bowl hit the country in 1930 and by 1934 severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion had turned the midwest into a desolate wasteland. Our very own home state of Kansas was smack-dab right in the middle and I interviewed Warren Kinsler a local of Kingman Kansas to see what life was really like in the day. Born in 1923 in Richfield Kansas Warren said his life was pretty good before the depression, his family had a
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Most of the cream and eggs they would trade for the various other items they needed for food, with a dozen eggs and some cream they could buy enough groceries to eat for a week. His family had a garden that was irrigated through a windmill, they had watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, and peas most of which they canned. For water he had to haul water into the house from the windmill and everyone drank from the same ladle. They had plenty of pork which they salted to preserve it and the beef they would hang in the barn in the winter until it got warmer than they would can it. In his early years they never had a tractor they had twelve horses to farm with but as the dust bowl worsened they lost all of those from breathing in the dust. After they lost all the horses they eventually got a Fordson tractor. At the height of the depression the price of wheat got down to about eighteen cents a bushel which wouldn’t buy much stuff their main source for buying things was through trading in eggs and cream. Warren said that he really never knew that they were poor growing up they never desired to have a new car or tractor, they ate well and enjoyed life despite the hard times that were upon them and he was very blessed compared to a lot of other people during that era. To conclude, many life lessons
Most of the cream and eggs they would trade for the various other items they needed for food, with a dozen eggs and some cream they could buy enough groceries to eat for a week. His family had a garden that was irrigated through a windmill, they had watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, and peas most of which they canned. For water he had to haul water into the house from the windmill and everyone drank from the same ladle. They had plenty of pork which they salted to preserve it and the beef they would hang in the barn in the winter until it got warmer than they would can it. In his early years they never had a tractor they had twelve horses to farm with but as the dust bowl worsened they lost all of those from breathing in the dust. After they lost all the horses they eventually got a Fordson tractor. At the height of the depression the price of wheat got down to about eighteen cents a bushel which wouldn’t buy much stuff their main source for buying things was through trading in eggs and cream. Warren said that he really never knew that they were poor growing up they never desired to have a new car or tractor, they ate well and enjoyed life despite the hard times that were upon them and he was very blessed compared to a lot of other people during that era. To conclude, many life lessons