Hello from Northern Michigan

[tmaskus]

My account was just validated and I wanted to let you all know how much I appreciate the forum.

I believe my grandfather/grandmother and great grandfather/grandmother were from the city of Sarny, Rivne Oblast. My grandfather immigrated to Iron River, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in 1895. My grandmother immigrated in 1902. I believe they were of Polish decent, and their surnames were Puczylowski and Stephanowska. They had a farm and used a team of horses for ALL the needed harvesting. My grandfather didn't believe in using a tractor. He used to say "You can't feed a horse gasoline". When you think about it, gasoline cost money and what money you were able to make was used to buy more important things. Their main crop was potatoes......and rocks in the spring of the year. They had a pile of rocks about 3 feet high and 5 feet across around most of the farm.

I am amazed how much information is posted on many web sites about the Ukraine. I'm looking forward to posting questions in the Geneology area. Many thanks to Hannia and others who take the time to help us.

We have up to 6" of snow coming in the next two days.....it's supposed to be spring !

Tom

[dobko]

Welcome Tom

I look forward to your posts.

[Gotno Gizmo]

Dear Tmaskus,
As an Englishman I' have a vocabulary problem with your introductory post.
You explain that part of the farming crop was "rocks"!
I assume you are not saying that they were quarrying stone?
Your advice appreciated. Welcome to the site, Ted.

[Zbyszek]

Hi Tom, I'm Polish living in central Poland but a member of my distant family emigrated in the year 1912 to Pennsylvania from a poor settlement somewhere between Warsaw and Lublin. Another part of my closer family still live in the very same village someone left in 1912. The local fields accumulated so much rock from Scandinavia during the Ice Age that my father who was also born in the very same village and he often participated in plowing the stony land, used to say to me 'Zbyszek, I had an impression that these stones just grew in soil because we have been extracting them each spring, piling them up and the "crop" hill grew higher and higher for decades'. In fact, the quality of sandy/rocky soil was poor so people sighed and said 'you go just 200 km eastward to fertile Ukraine, you spread grains on soil surface and just forget - and a few months later the field will be packed with six feet high wheat bush'. There are a lot of jokes about poor quality of typical Polish soil and one of my uncle qulifies it as a wheat-juniper sort.
Welcome to the forum Tom, we need new participants in order to put new life into this so nice but somewhat sleepy place.
... and we have Spring unfolding fast and killing Winter without mercy!
[Tom, for your information - some linguistic purists here absolutely reject 'the Ukraine' and suggest 'Ukraine' as the only acceptable choice. As I am Slavic who just learnt English a little, I can't say definitely if they are right].

[tmaskus]

Thank you for the welcome dobko and I'm pleased to see a moderator active here.

Gotno Gizmo: Ted, thank you for the welcome also. The rocks were an unwanted and uneeded by product of growing potatoes in usually poor farm country. However, they do come up to the surface of the ground every spring because of frost. It was important to pick the rocks so you didn't damage a plow or mechanized potato picker later in the year. As a result of picking rocks for many years, you had quite a "crop" which made a pretty good fence. Zbyszek stated it very well in his post, I can see he understands poor soil farming and stubborn farmers. I remember my uncle used to have to plow around one rock every year and lose some productive ground. He finally tried digging (by hand) around the rock, which took several months. He finally gave up when he found the rock was bell shaped and he did not have any dynamite nor drill. They both cost money which was hard to come by.

Zbyszek: I enjoyed reading your post very much, and can appreciate your fathers comments about rocky farming soil. Farming rocky soil certainly added to hard work on the farm. I look forward to hearing from you again, and your english is very good. We had about 1" of snow last night and temperature about -2 C. Some areas got up to 6 inches, winter dows not want to let go, but our tulips are coming up good.

ffdora: I will get back with you when I translate your post.

Tom