Farm Life

Jacob Bontrager Homestead

I was born in the late 1940s and grew up on Grandpa Jacob Bontrager’s farm in Howard County, Indiana. Half of the acreage lay on the west side of County Road 600 in Howard Township, with the other half on the east side of the road in Liberty Township. My family lived in the main house on the west side, pictured on the left. Dad farmed the land and had a small herd of dairy cows. We always had a dog, too, essential on a farm. Our main crops were corn, wheat, oats, and soybeans. Like all farm housewives, Mom grew a wide variety of vegetables in her large garden and did a lot of canning to provide for the winter months.

Grandpa and Grandma lived right across the road in what would be called the dawdy house. They were Beachy Amish and owned a car—black, of course. Grandma died when I was three years old, but I remember her and how my older brother, Don, and I would run across the road to spend time with her, and Grandpa, too, when he wasn’t out in the fields hoeing weeds. I remember her funeral and how sad we all were. 

Grandpa and Grandma’s Dawdy House

The woodlot lay at the far end of the farm’s eastern half, and Don and I would often hike back there to explore the “forest”. Dad turned up arrowheads from time to time as he was plowing. Today I have his collection of arrowheads in a picture box hanging on my office wall. Don and I imagined Indians traveling through the area and often played cowboys and Indians while wandering through the fields and woodlot. We also often played in our big white barn and in Grandpa’s red hip-roofed barn across the road.

View of Our House from Across the Road (1940s)