Chapter 8
Rose woke to the sound of nothing; no footsteps, no floor creaks, no laughter, no breath.
The robins chirped and sang outside the window—always the birds, especially in spring—but inside the house, the weight of silence hung heavy like fog.
And yet, after two years living alone, Rose had somehow grown used to the sound.
It wasn’t comfortable, just familiar, like the middle-of-the-night hunger pangs that once woke her as a child.
She’d always been able to go back to sleep despite them, somehow lulled by the familiar hum of her rumbling stomach.
That morning, the sun was up, and that seemed reason enough to get out of bed.
Like every day, there was work to be done.
That was the beauty of maintenance. It was the only constant in life.
Today brought a touch of novelty, though, because Rose anticipated planting the first seeds of the season—spinach, parsnips, chard, beets, turnips, peas, and carrots.
Nowadays, everyone called them Victory Gardens.
But for people like Rose, those who lived on farms in rural areas, they were the same gardens they’d always tended.
She’d learned to grow her own food as a child—an essential skill of poverty—and she thought today, planting the first seeds, was perhaps the most hopeful day of the year, a day to believe in the beauty and bounty of the future.
Rose shivered as she lifted the wool blanket.
It was chilly in the farmhouse, but that was usual for mid-April—the house wouldn’t fully warm up until late May—so she slipped on a robe and slippers and headed downstairs to make coffee.
She’d been quite resourceful with her rationed pound.
It was enough to enjoy one cup a day for the past six weeks.
But because she’d cut it with dried chicory root and reused her grounds every other day, she’d been able to stretch her last rationed amount a whole three weeks longer.
It was a small victory, but victory nonetheless, and the achievement brought a smile to her lips.
The less coffee she drank, the more the soldiers, including her son Hank, could enjoy, boosting their energy and morale. They simply needed it more.
While Rose waited for the coffee to percolate on the stove, she peeked out the window and saw the work ahead.
Half the day would be spent preparing the soil and the other half planting seeds.
She let the early-morning light shine on her face through the window, and said a prayer of gratitude for a bright and sunny day to do this important work.
She felt her fingers itch to get started, to keep busy.
It was her duty as an American to grow as many crops as she could, for her own use, for her community, the county, and the state.
Food was a weapon. Food would win the war.
That was the message she heard from President Roosevelt on Farm Mobilization Day.
After a cup of strong coffee, she enjoyed a cornmeal muffin, a bit dry since she’d been eating off her most recent batch for five days, but she moistened it with a spread of blackberry jam.
The native shrubs of plump, juicy wild blackberries near the pond were perfect for picking early last summer, and she’d preserved them to enjoy all year long.
With her stomach satiated, she quickly dressed and headed out to the yard to begin her work.
She had just started raking dead leaves, when her neighbor, Carol, walked up the drive.
“Good morning,” Carol sang. “Beautiful weather for gardening.”
“Morning,” Rose called back. She set her rake down but kept her gloves on as a sign. She enjoyed Carol’s company, but sometimes her neighbor talked too much. “What brings you by so early?”
“Good news,” Carol said. “They announced the formation of the Women’s Land Army.”
Rose sighed. “It’s about time.”
Rose understood the role the Women’s Land Army of America played during the Great War—as a teenager, she had worked alongside her own mother on the farm—and she knew the WLA had been back at work in Britain since much earlier in the war.
For some reason, there was a resistance to female farm workers in America, especially in the Midwest, where farming was performed by machines like tractors, balers, and tillers.
These machines were deemed too large and too difficult for a woman to control.
Rose knew it was only a matter of time before the consensus changed, and they’d allow women to do the very important farm work needed to fight this war from the home front.
She just hoped they’d change their minds before it was too late.
“They’re organizing under the umbrella of the United States Crop Corps,” Carol went on.
“Apparently, they’ve already held training camps for women—college students, secretaries, teachers, clerks, homemakers; you just have to be eighteen and in good health to join.
More training camps are planned, and otherwise, it’ll be on-the-job training.
Representatives from Madison, La Crosse, and Eau Claire are looking to place female students as farm workers in our area as soon as the semester ends.
And they’re looking for places to stay.” Carol eyed Rose’s farmhouse in the distance.
“If they bunk two or three to a room, I figured you’ve got space for ten to fifteen young women here. ”
Rose’s house had been louder and bustling once upon a time.
But in the years after her husband died, her two sons blew away like dandelion seeds.
First, Albert to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming the next Cary Grant, and then, after Pearl Harbor, her youngest son, Hank, enlisted and was stationed overseas.
She’d always wanted more children to fill the six bedrooms of this large home, but she’d been gifted only two.
What she really wanted was a daughter, someone to teach the skills and knowledge she possessed.
She’d studied home economics for two years before she got married, and while she didn’t finish a degree, she continued to teach herself how to efficiently run a home, a subject her two sons cared nothing about.
Her boys had no interest in learning how to truss a chicken or sew curtains, how to stretch a pound of meat or knit a scarf.
She had cookbooks to share and a collection of handwritten recipes that she could only hope to pass down to a daughter-in-law someday, once her sons married.
Now, at Carol’s suggestion, she might have a dozen surrogate daughters under her wing, all at once.
The thought of housing that many girls seemed both exhilarating and next to impossible.
How will I feed so many mouths? How will I keep up with the washing? The dishes? The food prep?
“You want me to run a boardinghouse?” she asked.
“Exactly. A safe place to get a good night’s rest, with healthy meals for energy to do hard labor. We can house some of these women here and there, but none of the other farms around here have room for that many girls. Plus, it will be more comfortable for them not to have to live with men.”
Rose turned to look at her farmhouse, and suddenly, she could already see these nameless, faceless girls Carol spoke of—young women eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old—full of energy.
She could already hear their laughter, their boisterous chatting.
She sensed their vitality in a wave of goose bumps.
Maybe I haven’t grown so used to silence.
She wasn’t one to make rash decisions, but this didn’t feel like a decision.
It was her duty and purpose. Patriotism.
It was another small part she could play to help win the war.
These girls were going to do the hardest manual labor of their lives—on-the-job training that would make their backs ache, their hands burn with blisters—and they would need a soft place to land each night.
She eyed her Victory Garden and envisioned these women bent over here beside her, picking the very vegetables they’d eat for dinner. The thought alone buoyed her.
“I can have a representative from the WLA and the universities organizing these girls contact you to answer any questions,” Carol offered, as if sensing hesitation.
Rose shook her head and took up her rake. “No questions,” she said, starting to remove the dead leaves with renewed vigor. She took a full breath of spring air and felt her heart flutter. She noted the earthy scent of spring, of possibility.
“I’ll start preparing for their arrival at once.”