The Immigrants' Reality

Down on the Farm

This is a story of fiction based on a true story.  Names have been

changed.  Resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The small farmhouse was far from luxurious, but it was theirs,

 lock, stock, and barrel.  To Stephan and Mary, the Kessler farm,

gifted to them by their benevolent earth angel, their American

mamochka, was heaven on twenty acres.  Anna Kessler rests in

peace, buried within the grove of apple trees, sorely missed by

the teenaged, Russian speaking Austrian immigrants whom she

 took into her home and heart that day in 1909 the stowaways 

arrived in America, starving and exhausted. 

Stephan Voloshin and Mary Nazarov Voloshin would not know

starvation again.  The New Jersey farm was prolific with edibles;

fruit trees and berry bushes of every imaginable variety, grape

arbors and vegetable gardens.  The natural terrain was fragrant

with honeysuckle, making tolerable the odors from the chicken

coops that wafted through the hot summer breezes. 

The farm was a portrait of green and white serenity in winter,

thickly wooded with tall pines, bushy firs, stately spruces and

pretty hollies that mingled among the bare branches of the

mature oaks that homed the deer Stephan hunted.

Exhaustion became the way of life for Stephan and Mary. 

Stephan maintained his full time employment, working long

hours as a janitor in a factory.  His employer depended on his

youthful brawny eagerness to do any task asked of him.  It didn't

seem to affect Stephan's performance that his English was poor

and heavily accented.  He understood what was expected, what

needed to be done, and he worked with a smile.

His jealous American co-workers made Stephan's life on the job a

living hell, mocking his accent and spitting on him as they walked

by.  Stephan did not retaliate, even when he sat down to eat the

roasted chicken between thick slices of fresh baked bread that

Mary had carefully wrapped in cotton cloth, and found it saturated

with urine.  He held his head high, ignoring the men's guffaws.

Stephan needed the work; he had Mary, his little son, John and

 his baby daughter, Anna, to support.   Coming home to his wife

and children every evening made life worth all his toil, for after

supper, he handled the farm's heavy chores until dark.  Stephan

was barely nineteen.

Seventeen year old Mary never stopped working from dawn until she

fell into bed with Stephan late at night. There, she nursed and changed

the baby, often falling asleep rocking the cradle, handmade by Stephan,  

stored permanently next to their bed.  She rose during the night to nurse

Anna and Stephan got up to bring John to the outhouse.  Most of the

farm chores fell onto Mary's slender shoulders during Stephan's

workday.  She fed the chickens at daybreak and collected the eggs

before the children awakened, putting to good use their nap times

to tend the gardens and pick the ripe produce.

The large kitchen with its earthen floor of packed clay overlooked

the backyard and was the center of the farmhouse's activities.   Mary

cooked and baked on the large, square wood burning stove which she

kept perpetually ready, stirring and stoking the glowing embers and

adding wood early each morning.  The farm had two wells, one out in

back, another which pumped water into the deep kitchen sink where

she washed the dishes, the family's clothing and bedding, and bathed

the babies, hand pumping the cold water into a bucket and heating it

on the stove.  The kitchen also housed the sewing machine on which

Mary made and mended all their clothing.  On the floor was a woven

basket where she kept cloth remnants and sewing supplies.  A long

wooden table with benches occupied the center of the room.   Mary

was relieved to collapse for brief respites as she nursed the baby and

fed their toddling and mischievous little son.

As weary as they were, Stephan and Mary doted on their children

and each other.   The couple never went to sleep angry; it was their

rule.  The special reward was their lovemaking, stealing moments of

passion whenever possible, their ardor for each other intense in the dark

and quiet night when they must remain silent and still.