Appears to be beehives worker-has
hat on with net attached, Chesebro Homestead early 1900s (after 1903).
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Pepper farm, 1938-1948 |
Farm with equipment |
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Postcard reads: Pineapple patch and shacks on Fathers place (Frank Chesebro). |
“When my dad came to Boca…he first worked with…Frank Chesebro…then he started sharecropping...In 1917 it was easy to find work if you liked to farm.
… I used to go out with my mother and father. There I would work and play. You couldn’t do much work at five years old. My mother would help my father.” |
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Picking beans at Butts farm
1938-1948 |
“Living on Butts Farm there was no light bill, no rent, no nothing. Just be ready to go to the bean field in the morning… . Nobody knocked on the door to wake you up on Butts Farm... . You go to the field according to how the dew was on the bean- if it was heavy, you went late…to give them time to dry off… . There was a man who came around and let everybody know and then we would wash or scrub or whatever…to your house because we had a longer morning at home. And cook…your beans and your peas and whatever else so when you came home from the field in the evening you wouldn’t have to do all that. It was fun really.” |
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Chesebro Nursery -- Time for a “watermelon
break.” Left to right: Homer Goddard, Sr.; Lee;
and Will Demery, who died in 1937. |
Lunchtime for field hands on the
Chesebro farm.
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Field hands on the Chesebro farm.
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“On a good picking day, there would be a lot of people out there… . I picked all my beans standing up, it didn’t hurt my back. But most people had to crawl, you put on these knee pads… . The ground was soft; it was sand.” |
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Man with hat and crates |
“I left Georgia because I was tired of plowing a mule for $.30 a day. So I came to Florida to better my condition. And I went out there (Butts Farm) and I started to work on the farm for $1.00 a day. I was digging ditches for irrigation, digging stumps and trees for clearing land for farming.” |
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Bean packers |
“You were paid a dollar a day for a day’s work, but when they would start to picking beans they were picked by the bushel. It was $.20 a bushel…then went up to $.40 a bushel from that to $.50 a bushel. We picked string beans. ... A couple of years he (Butts) planted about 65 to 80 acres of pepper but it didn’t do good so he didn’t plant anymore.” |
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Fred Aiken (standing) at Butts bean farm |
August Butts |
Workers at the Butts farm |
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Workers in a bean, pepper, or
tomato field |
Click to Enlarge Picture
Letter to Thomas Moore Rickards
- dated February 28, 1904. |
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