All this time I lived with my parents, and wrought on the plantation; and having had schooling pretty well for a planter, I used to improve myself in winter evenings, and other leisure times.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read.
I lived on the farm with my parents and grandparents. I had no playmates as a young child, and I was indulged. I helped my grandmother piece quilts, and we made pretty albums, an old-fashioned pastime. We cut poems and pictures out of magazines.
My parents owned a plants nursery. We all grew up growing things and planting things and selling things, and I also managed landscape crews.
I have been sustained by cane field, the cane plantation I have.
My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way.
After school, my sister and I helped our mom in the garden. We grew potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes - not for fun, but to eat.
I was a farm kid from the plains of South Venezuela, from a very poor family. I grew up in a palm tree house with an earthen floor.
My school was six miles away from where I lived on the farm. I had to walk and run, there and back every day, through gorges and over rivers. If I was late, there was a very big stick waiting for me.
When I was still at school, I'd help Dad at the concrete yard he had prior to the garden centre. I was doing things there, like driving the tractors and forklifts, that most kids my age couldn't.
I grew up on a farm - it was a lovely life; we'd make tree houses all day - and my parents worked from home.