Densho Digital Archive - Seichi Hayashida Interview (denshovh-hseichi-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

AI: So, can you also tell us, describe your farm? If you could kind of think back and have a mental picture of what it looked like, maybe during one of the seasons.

SH: Well, the farm that my dad had was -- he didn't own the land, he was leasing a 10 acre farm and he grew mainly... well, the first year that he leased the land, it was already being farmed. All 10 acres were in strawberries. And when my dad moved from Sunnydale to Bellevue, he had never raised strawberries, he didn't know anything about strawberries. He was used to raising lettuce, and peas, and celery, cauliflower, all types of vegetable. So, 'course, moving there in the middle of winter in December, that spring, one year he harvested strawberries. It was very cheap. Prices fluctuated so much. And it happened to be the year, being '28, '29, Depression, he could hardly give strawberries away, and that's all he had, 10 acres of it. So, he kinda got discouraged and mad and the following spring he plowed... that following, that fall he plowed the whole 10 acres of strawberries up. Lo' and behold, the next year, strawberries were high priced. So, he went back and replanted a couple acres of the ten into strawberries and he raised strawberries after that. Every year we had a couple extra strawberries. Then he raised, started... he introduced raising lettuce, peas, and celery, cauliflower in Bellevue. Until then, they didn't raise those crops. And then, pretty soon they all raised.

AI: And, where was your 10 acres located? Could you describe a little bit about that area, some of the geography?

SH: The farm, you mean?

AI: Yes.

SH: The farm, the land that we farmed and our neighbors farmed, was just east of Lake Sturtevant. We used to call it "Midlakes," us kids did, and that was a popular name, I believe. You ask people in Bellevue, "Do you know where Lake Sturtevant is?" and over than half the people probably wouldn't know. But if you said, "Midlakes," everybody knew. And we farmed around it. We irrigated out of that lake. The lake is still there. The farmland that we farmed and my neighbor farmers is all under concrete and blacktop now. The only reason I know where it is because the lake hasn't been moved and it's still there.