We thought they were good times. I'd go out and get the potatoes and mother would cut them and put them in a barrel. We'd go out in the garden digging the furrows with a pick over our head – dig, dig, dig, until we got that long furrow dug. And Mom would plant the potatoes on the bed and she'd trench while we were going up the furrow digging. And we had to do it right too. She had a cabbage garden that we had to weed and get ready for her beets, lettuce, turnip and parsnip. She had a plant bed. She had lovely flowers. We didn't do much swimming.

Did we ever pick berries! My father would row to the other side of O'Donnell's. We'd have a lunch packed for the day and we'd have to pick so much berries before we were allowed to eat our lunch. He'd say, "You got to fill your cans and then we'll have lunch." We'd be delighted then and we'd pick and pick and pick. We'd have big sacks of berries. My mother would put them in a barrel of water for the winter. When she'd want to make jam, she'd go out with a knife or the axe and chop out a piece out of the ice. She'd make tarts and potato cakes.

We had no grandeur, but life was really good. We didn't know anything about that then. We said the Rosary every night. Coming up on Lent, mom and father would get up early in the morning and light the little lamp on the table and get ready to walk to St. Joseph's to mass every morning of Holy Week. They'd leave us in the lamplight and warn us to take care of the house. My mother was a Bishop from St. Joseph's. She used to keep hens and ducks. They wouldn't lay every day, not like now with all the feeds. For feed she'd give them tea leaves and rolled oats with flour over it. She'd send us with a big plate of that to feed the hens. And she'd have a tub with a tier of salt in it and a tier of eggs. We never got no eggs til Easter Sunday morning – we'd get two eggs. We were delighted with that.

We had cows and pigs. We had fresh milk and fresh butter. Father would hang the pigs on a big post to freeze it. Only last month there was a man from Fermeuse who sent me up the cream to make butter. I made 6 prints for my daughter in law from Holland. I shares it out, you know, because its so scarce. Thank God I'm still living in my own home and I'm quite happy. I have 25 grandchildren and 1 great great grandchild.

O'Donnell's School, circa 1949. Teacher Gertrude Daley