<Begin Segment 7>

MN: Okay, we're talking about your farm. Where did you purchase your fertilizer from?

DM: Fertilizer, my dad usually bought a truckload of chicken manure from L.A. which was trucked in.

MN: So how did you fertilize your farm?

DM: The fertilizer was dumped into our, on our land, and that was my job to shovel the fertilizer into a gunnysack. And it was also my job to distribute the fertilizer up and down the row with the gunnysack on my back.

MN: How many pounds was a gunnysack.

DM: Oh, they must have weighed forty pounds or so.

MN: What was the worst part of doing this?

DM: Smell.

MN: I guess 'cause it's chicken manure, huh?

DM: And the heavy labor work.

MN: So when you started to plant, what time of the year did you start planting?

DM: The melons were usually started in September, and harvested in late November. And tomatoes and squash were planted about the end of February, after the frost season. And they were harvested from mid-May to the end of June. And most of the squash and tomatoes were hauled into L.A. Market.

MN: So after you planted your crops, how did you water your farm?

DM: Well, there were drainage... not drainage, irrigation canal throughout the valley, which was water that came from the Colorado River. And my dad would open the gate from the canal leading into the farm.

MN: So you didn't have to carry it in the bucket?

DM: No.

MN: What happens if you had a cold snap?

DM: Cold snap, you're probably talking about the frost?

MN: Frost, yes.

DM: There were years when frost would kill our plants, and we had to replant all over again.

MN: So you'd start from the seed again?

DM: Yeah, or seedling or plants.

MN: So where do you get your plants if they got --

DM: They were brought in from the L.A. area.

MN: So you just had a whole crop wiped out by frost, and you have to buy new plants. Do you get it on credit?

DM: Probably did. I can't remember, my dad handled the finances.

MN: So if you knew there was a frost coming, how did you protect your plants?

DM: He used to buy old tires, and around four o'clock in the morning, he would get up and light the tires to produce heat, but it produced more smoke than heat, I think. But he would start the fire by collecting horse manure and soaking them in kerosene, and put 'em in a tire to light. That's how you started the fire in the tires.

MN: Was that common among the farmers there?

DM: That was common. That's about the only protection we had from frost. Some of the rich farmers had fans, huge fans, which they would blow across the farm. Of course that came after the area was electrified. Electricity didn't come to the valley until Hoover Dam was built, and the electricity was trucked in to the valley. And by the time we got the electricity to our farm, it was about in the mid-'30s, early '30s. I still remember wiring our house, which was a simple procedure, 'cause two wires leading into, two wires leading from the pole, and you put your socket between the two wires. Usually had two sockets in every house. Simple.

MN: You were in high school when you wired your house.

DM: Yeah, probably, early. I think I was in high school in 1934.

MN: And then you got your wiring in the mid-'30s, you wired your house. Now going back to your farm, what did your mother do on the farm?

DM: She worked on the ranch too, between her household chores, which were backbreaking jobs. On a farm it's a lot of stoop labor.

MN: So your mother helped out and she did the housework also.

DM: Yes.

MN: You mentioned earlier that your father was in the Russo-Japan War and he was injured. How serious was that injury and how did that affect his ability to farm?

DM: He limped. I notice he didn't talk too much about it, but he managed without crutches or canes until he got older.

MN: So he never complained about pain?

DM: No.

MN: Did your father hire other workers?

DM: We had a lot of Mexican laborers come, and had one particularly, a Filipino man that he lived with us and worked on the farm.

MN: So how many people on average did you have, hired workers?

DM: During harvest season, it would be a group of maybe around six people would come in to help harvest. So it was seasonal work for them.

MN: And you said a lot of it was Mexican labor. Did your parents speak Spanish?

DM: Oh, yeah. Well, enough to get by. Mexican language is pretty simple.

MN: So you learned Spanish also.

DM: Sure.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.