No Room for Lazy People - Mildred (Somero) Henault

New Ipswich Historical Society

FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region

Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.

Mildred (Somero) Henault

My grandparents were Isaac and Liisa Sorvari, who came to America via Boston. They moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and my grandfather worked at Quinsigamond Wire Works. They lived in a three-decker, but when my grandfather’s health began to fail a little, so they started looking for afarm in New Hampshire. At that time a lot of Finnish families from Worcester, such as the Raijaniemis and Lahtis, moved to Dublin. The Laaksos, Kangases, and my grandparents came to New Ipswich. My grandparents bought a 150-acre farm in Highbridge, part of New Ipswich. They bought 10 or 12 cows and milked morning and night. They had a cream separator and sent milk to sell in Boston every day and delivered milk to several families in Highbridge.

My grandfather had a team of workhorses that pulled mowing machines, plows, harrows, and wagons. Every winter he would take the horses to Bank Village and cut lots of ice blocks and put sawdust on them. On the farm, they also had an ice house that kept the ice frozen all summer long; I remember seeing sawdust on the lawn. They even had ice left over by the time they went back the next winter to cut more ice.

My father, Eino Somero, and mother, Sophie Sorvari, got married July 2, 1920, and lived with my maternal grandparents for awhile. And during their honeymoon, lightning struck the farmhouse and blew the back wall off. If they had been sleeping upstairs, they might have been killed. The difference in ages between my parents’ oldest and youngest child was 25 years: my sister Ingrid was born in 1922, and my youngest brother Earl was born in 1947.

Once there was an old Methodist church building to be auctioned off in Bank Village and my father wanted to buy it. ‘Course, he didn’t have any money. So he got someone to give him the money, which turned out to be $100. But they had to tear the building down. For many years afterwards, we kids were taking nails off the church slats so they could finish my parents’ house with them: Tom Parhiala, my father’s friend, built the house.

My father worked for Fessenden Portable Saw Mill which moved from place to place and so he was gone for a week at a time. We had chickens, cows, and hogs so during the Depression we had milk, eggs, and meat that sustained our family well. Summertime was fun: the ‘Worcester girls’ would come up to pick blueberries. My grandparents had about 25 acres of blueberry bushes and about 10 girls lived on their farm all summer long. We grandchildren would go with the girls to pick berries.

We’d start early in the morning, after the dew was gone, about seven o’clock and pick for half a day. The blueberry crates held 32 quarts each. And I’m sure my grandparents sold between 10 and 16 crates, three times a week, when the berries were picked up to be delivered to Boston. In the winter, my grandfather would clean the berry pastures; it takes a couple of years before blueberry shrubs are established and producing berries. We would pick berries up on my grandparents’ hill. In the back of their property, however, my grandfather had several acres on the Greenville town line. He would go there himself and somehow get the biggest, ripest berries. It never failed: he’dcome back to the house with two of his 12 quart pails, heaping full. And he’d have the dirtiest blueberries: full of twigs and leaves. Depending on market prices, my grandparents got 15-to-17 cents a quart and we children would get five-to-10 cents a quart. In late August, blueberries were used fordye because they got wormy at that time and you couldn’t eat them.

During haying season it was our job to trample down the hay in the wagon. Then the horses would bring the hay into the barn, which had three levels. We kids would jump from level to level in the hay and when we accidentally bit our tongue doing this, we’d say, “Never again!”

My grandfather used to make hay in the back fields. My grandmother would say, “Would you bring this herikka to Pa?” Herikka is a mixture of water and milk. The Finns said that milk does not take the thirst away yet water alone does not satisfy but the mixture does both. Sometime after the war, when farmers were told they had to have stainless steel vats and all that stuff, farming suddenly became very expensive. Their old big milk cans were made out of tin, but evidently that wasn’t good enough.

[Next: No Room for Lazy People - Earl Somero]