The Boberg Kids

Brita Boberg, 1919

"Now, of course, you know my brothers and sisters, but I thought I would try and give you all of their information really quick. We can check later if I got the dates all right. So, Mom and Dad were married in October of 1917 and Brita was born in 1918. Her full name was Anna Brita but she pretty much was never called that. Next came Henrik in 1919. His full name was Johan Henrik. He died when he was 16; I believe it was '35 or '36. Well, next to be born was Sara Matilda in 1921. Then came me Gunborg Sofia in 1923 and Elin Margaretha in 1924. The baby of the family was Lennart born in 1928.

With six kids, it was sometimes hard to keep track of all of us. One time when, I think I was two years old, they were going to have a party for Farfar; he was 60

Henrik Boberg, 1920

years old. They were so busy working all of them that no one was paying attention tome for a little while. I had seen Dad go with the horse and the hay wagon down towards the schoolhouse so I set after. Of course I don’t remember this; adults told me this story later.

Dad came over a hill from a field where he had been working. I think he was hauling in grain because Farfar’s birthday was in September. He just came over that hill and he saw me. You who have been there, you know that when you go down the first hills, there is a kind of flat space for a while. Dad saw me there, my blond head almost out of sight over the hill, running like a two-year-old does. He called to me. If he hadn’t come

Mom, about 3

in that moment, I would have continued on down to the school house and what would have happened to me there, no one knows. I heard him and stopped and ran to him to meet him. He picked me up and put me on top of the load. To spare the horses, Dad usually walked up that steep hill. You know how steep that is and Dad was so careful with his horses. When he came to the house, everyone was running around the yard frantic looking for me; I had disappeared. They looked up and saw me there sleeping on top of the grain.

One time, they used to tell us, Sara disappeared. We had been playing hide and seek, and she went in the vagnsboden, the wagon room, and there was chest in there where they kept some things. I guess it looked like a good place to hide. When no-one came to find her soon enough, she fell asleep. We thought everyone had been found, but then realized that there was no Sara. Eventually, I guess one kid thought of going in there with the wagons. We used to crawl down in front of the

Sara, about 5

sled when we played hide and seek, but when they came in there, someone thought of looking in that box, and there lay Sara sleeping. There were a lot of funny incidents. I repeat myself I’m sure, and you have to forgive me for that, and I’m sure I forget some things too. But I’ll talk more about my siblings later."

Baby Lennart in Elin's arms

Baby Margaretha

Harvesting grain and picking berries

Kjettestorp field, late 1950s or early 1960s

"Well, as you’ve heard now, a lot of the farm work was done by hand when we were young. They had horses, of course, to pull the equipment like plows and things. There were no tractors, of course, or anything like that. The only mechanical thing we had was the threshing machine. Several farms went together to buy the threshing machine. They formed an association, so to speak. They had meetings about the threshing so the schedule was drawn up

Astor Karlsson with what I assume is some sort of horse-drawn grain harvester

when the machine was going to different places. Then also other people would call and want to rent the threshing machine. Morbror Ernst was the machinist. He followed the threshing machine along as anyone was using or renting it. When they were threshing they had to hire some people to help because there were many stations to be manned. One person had to feed the threshing machine and one person stood on the platform and cut open the bundles and gave them to the guy who was feeding it into the machine. There

I believe Thor Boberg is in the middle here, but I'm not sure what they're doing.
Perhaps this is an earlier form of thresher than the one mom describes?

had to be at least one guy, maybe two, up in the grain bin to put the bundles up to the person who was cutting off the bands. I did a lot of that cutting off the bands. That was often a girl. And I sometimes went to the neighbors too. If there was no young person at a certain farm, they might ask one of us to come too. Dad had to watch where the grain came out. They hooked on burlap sacks and when those got full, he had to shut off the flow and put on a new sack. That was a full-time job because they had two different

Someone carrying a sack full of grain perhaps? It was next to the previous picture in the album.

spaces where the grain came out and you couldn’t let it run over or there would be grain lost. Then he had to haul it down to the visthusboden where he took it upstairs and emptied it in the different bins where it belonged. Whichever household was doing the threshing that day, it was expected that the wife there would feed all those men. Of course, this didn’t last long, depending on how big a farm you had. Threshing usually only took a few days at each farm.

We also had a lot of potatoes. In the spring, Dad would go with a certain plow and make furrows and we would come along after and set the potatoes, as it was called. We dropped the potatoes into the furrow with a certain space in between. Then they came with another piece of equipment and covered them up. In the fall, then Dad again would have to make a certain furrow, so as to not cut into the potatoes but to expose them. We would have a short-handled hoe and we would pick up the potatoes and hoe around in the dirt a bit to make sure we didn’t leave any potatoes behind. When it was time to pick up the potatoes, then we hired people, kids mostly. That was one thing young people could do. At potato picking time, the schools often were closed for a week or two so kids could go out and earn some money.

In the fall, we would go out in the forest and such and pick lingonberries and blueberries. We would pick all we needed for our own use through the year and then we sold the extra, all we could find to pick. They made some kind of drink that I thought was the best drink that I thought was the best thing. It was called enbärsdricka, juniper drink. Juniper bushes, the first year berries are white and small, kind of like white pepper corns. The next year they’re larger and bluish-brown. That’s when they picked the juniper berries and made that

This one shows the Swedish forest in 1978. There were a few wild blueberries ripe at that
time. Henrik Boberg leads the way here with his fishing pole and perhaps some fish
he caught :) Behind him follow Ingemar Bäck, Annika Boberg, Elizabeth Moore Powell,
Mom, Dad, Jim Moore, and Lennart Boberg.
 

drink. I don’t know how they made it exactly. I don’t remember that. We also picked cherries. We had several different kinds of cherry trees in the yard. Some of them were just eating cherries, but we also dried cherries for the winter. We had apples and pears in the yard too. Some big cherries we used to sell in town."

How to Harvest Grain

The road between the house and barn at Kjettestorp in 1978. Left to right are
Magnus Boberg, Jim Moore, Henrik Boberg, Elizabeth Moore Powell and Annika Boberg.
The field behind us is the one you see in the photo below.

"Well, now that we’ve seen what the outside of Kjettestorp looked like, now we can talk about how it was to live there. In the early 20s through the

middle 1900s, the countryside was dotted with these little dairy farms, and they lived self-sufficient life. We grew what we consumed. Very few things were bought in town. Of course they had to buy coffee, and different things like knitting and sewing needles and some fish. Although when Farfar when he was alive, he did a lot of fishing down in Lake Föllingen, Dad was not so inclined to that, some but not so much.

The hook for gathering bundles of cut grain
which hung on Mom's kitchen wall.

There was a lot of hard work but also people were proud of how they took care of themselves. I remember one time when I heard one woman say to another, “Have you heard that Rut bought bread in town?” Rut was Morbror Nisse’s wife. We called her Rut i Grönede. She worked so hard outside all the time that she maybe didn’t have time to do everything, but it was talked about like it was such a disgrace to buy bread in town. I remember one year after I had come to America that Sara wrote to me, “I’m glad we don’t have to work so hard doing everything ourselves, but if our mother and Ingemar’s mother knew I bought beans in a can for Christmas, they would be turning in their graves.”

Maybe we should talk about the different things we did. In the spring, Dad planted the wheat in one field and the rye in another field and the oats in another field. We sometimes grew some feed for the cows too. When they

I'm guessing that Mom is holding one of the wooden rods

that she describes that went in the middle of a bundle

of grain when they were set up to dry.

harvested grains, they had a scythe. Men would go first with a scythe. It was done so the grain fell in a neat row. Afterwards came a woman with a hook and gathered up so much grain and tied it with straw and made a bundle. The hook was the right size so it gathered up the right amount of grain for one bundle. You couldn’t just grab the grain with your hands because it was sharp and would give you splinters.  I have one of those hooks on my kitchen wall to remember. I didn’t do a lot of this gathering up. I did some; we all did. When it came to oats, Dad soon bought what was called a slåttermaskin. That machine could be set, so it dropped just enough for a bundle. This was a great improvement because then we didn’t need to carry that hook along. We just gathered up the bundle that was already there and tied the bundle with straw. 

All of these bundles -- for whatever kind of grain -- needed to be set up to dry. Sometimes they had a wood rod in the middle to gather it around because it had to sit out and dry for so long -- I don’t remember exactly how long, a couple weeks, or three -- and it always rained some in that time. It had to be hung on there in a way that the rain ran off so it didn’t soak the bundles."

This is the field to the north of Norrgård at Kjettestorp. You can see the bundles of grain
set out to dry with wooden rod sticking up from the middle of each one. Taken around 1953.

The Big Red Barn

The view of the barn from the house in 2000

"Anyway, now to go back to Kjettestorp, let’s go to the barn. Up in the barn, on the north end of the barn was what we called logen. That’s where they put the grain when it was harvested and dried until the threshing machine came. Then on the other side, there was storage for straw and chaff. If we go outside now and go in the main door to the barn, there to the left when we come in there were the cow stalls. They had a round sort of dish for water. When the cows pushed their noses in to drink, there was a sort of button or lid and more water came in, so we didn’t have to go around with buckets to give them water. We just pumped up water into the barrel. That was part of the chores in the barn was to pump that barrel full of water. We had room for 10 or 12 cows.

Mom labeled this photo "Kisa kor" or Kisa cows.

Then at the end there, there was a place for chickens. There were, of course, nests for chickens and large dowels where they roosted at night and there was a little door out to the yard and a little landing going down for them to walk on when they went out. We used to have a big resting yard for the chicken where they could go out in the open but we very seldom had them run loose. My dad was real firm about that. He didn’t want to step on chicken droppings. That little chicken yard was surrounded by wire; I guess that’s why they call it chicken wire. That wire was high enough so the chickens could not fly over. One on end of the father table for the cows there was a stepladder up to the hayloft. You had to go up there with the hayfork and pitch down some hay when you were feeding them. Sometimes we fed them straw. Then we had some kind of slag product from a sugar factory that resembled molasses. We would put that in a watering can and stir it up with water and mix that with the straw. Oh how the cows loved that.

On the inside of the barn, there was also a place for pigs. We always had one or two pigs, one to sell and one for our own use, for butchering. Then there were a couple of boxes for calves. On the south end of the barn there was a box where we had the chopping machine. We grew a certain kind of turnips that we chopped up for the cows in wintertime. They were stored out in the field, packed in with straw and dirt on top so they didn’t freeze. Then they could go there and get so much at a time.

This is Lennart, Binga, and Sara. I believe they're in the field next to the main house at
Kjettestorp because you can see Lake Föllingen in the background and I'm guessing it's
about 1938 because Lennart looks like he's about 10. :)

Then there was a room for another staircase up to the hayloft where we got hay down for the horses. We had room for four horses, I believe. There was a chest there where we picked up the crushed oats that they got. Each horse had its own place to eat. The horses didn’t have a watering system, so we had to take buckets and give each of them water. Then there was a big stall where we kept a brooding mare. She was in there when she was going to have a foal. Then at the end of the barn, there was something that, well, I don’t know what it’s called here. In Swedish, it’s a selekammare. That’s where all the bridles and such was kept, all the straps for the horses when they were going to pull a wagon and such. Then there was rather big place called vagnsboden, where the wagons were kept and sleds and all those sorts of things.

Then at the end of that was where the bridge went up to the hayloft when they hauled in the hay. The horse went all the way up on top and then when we unloaded the hay, we’d put out a layer and then salt and then another layer and then more salt. That helped preserve the hay from getting moldy. Up on the north end of the barn was the new woodshed. When they cut the wood, there was no such a thing as just throwing it in. It was lined up along the wall all neat and different wood was in different sections."

The Kjettestorp barn in 1978 with photographer Magnus Boberg in front of it :)

How to Wash Clothes

"In brygghuset, there was also a great big stove with a great big kettle. This is where we heated up water when we were washing. There was one time when I wasn’t terribly old when Midi and Brita were going to wash and I begged to be able to wash too. Dad cut off the legs of a scrub board. When I stood on a

wood block and put the scrub board into a tub, then I could reach down and wash small items. I was quite proud that I got to do such grown up work. There is a picture in the albums somewhere where Midi and Brita and I stand with our scrub boards on källarbacken, and we have burlap aprons and scarves on our heads.

Twice a year they did a big washing. It was called a byk. It took about three days. The first day they washed regular clothes that we were wearing. Then the second day they washed everything white, kitchen towels, sheets, pillowcases, and the fine linen like tablecloths and such. They had a great big wood tub sitting up on legs and in that they would put first the kitchen towels on the bottom layer and after that came sheets and pillow cases and on top were the fine linen.

Then they made up a kind of detergent. They called it lut. I don’t know what they made it out of, but that was all mixed into water and it was all heated up in the huge kettle and scooped up and poured over the wash in the wooden tub. There was a plug in the bottom. They drained the mixture all out and then they heated it up again and poured it over the wash again. This they did several times. You can imagine that this was sort of hard labor, so when they had a byk somewhere the neighborhood boys or young men would come and help scoop that lut up over the clothes. Then they had a little party after out on the grass. Then the lut sat on the clothes overnight.

Mom's klappträ lives in Marcus' room now :)

In the morning, they drained that out and the clothes were put into smaller tubs and put on a wagon and we took it down to the crick to rinse. We would have something called a klappbord. It was a long piece of wood with two long legs on one end and two shorter on the other. The long legs were put down in the creek and the shorter were up on shore. They would lay down on their knees and rinse the clothes in the water and then they put them up on the board and they had something called a klappträ that they hit the clothes with. I have one of those hanging in my kitchen. They had a certain rhythm when they did that and it sounded like this: Whump Whump slapslap Whump Whump slapslap. Oh how I wished I could do it that way and I begged again so Dad put up a little klappbord for me and I tried so hard to do it just like Midi. Well then, the clothes were taken home again and with such a big wash Dad had to put up extra clothes lines and the clothes were put up to dry, so that was the third day.

Otherwise, they washed maybe once a month. There were two girls who used to come one at a time and help with the washing. They were sisters and their names were Anna and Astrid. In summer time then, all girls – big or little – wore hats. One of these girls had the most beautiful hat that I had ever seen. It was a straw hat with a cluster of cherries on the side and I thought, “When I grow up, I’m going to buy a hat like that.” I haven’t yet though and I think it’s getting a bit too late now.  Those two sisters were tall and slim and they had hair that was cut real short. When we first wanted to cut our hair, Mother said that we had to keep it cleaner than Anna and Astrid. They had a brother; he was also real tall and skinny. He was our hired man for a summer or two. He was called Lång Anders, or Tall Anders."

Note: the short video included here is one Amanda took of Mom illustrating the rhythm the women used when beating the water out of the clothes with the klappträ.