Family Photos: Growing Rye 2

I promise that this is the last post showing rye growing, at least for the immediate future. However, since there was a second batch of photos of Sara and Maria’s rye crop, I thought I should post these as well. As before, we have a series of four photos.

The first photograph shows the two sisters cutting the rye with shears. Unless Sara and Maria grew rye on more than one occasion, this and the other photos were probably taken in 1968, the same year as the photos in the first Growing Rye post (here). If so, these photos were taken on a different day, since both are wearing different dresses than they were in the first group.

The perspective in these photos differs from that in the first group of photos: either the sisters are on the opposite end of the rye strip, or the two groups of photos were taken from different sides of the rye. A clue in the first two pictures hints at the answer. Visible in the background, on the other side of the rye, is a block wall. No such wall is in view in any of the photos of the first group. This implies, I think, that these photos were taken from the other side of the rye strip.

The third photograph supports this conclusion, since the trellis that was behind the rye in the first group of photos is now seen to be in front of the rye in this group. In other words, we are looking at the same end of the rye strip in both groups of photos, but the two groups were taken from different sides of the strip.

One final photo shows an important variation. Note that Maria appears to be holding a scythe, not the shears shown in earlier photos. Perhaps this is simply for a photo op, but it does raise a question about the source of the scythe: Was it from our family’s history, or was it merely a tool that they acquired somewhere along the way? Curious minds want to know.

Of course, other questions come to mind (perhaps some reader can provide answers): Where precisely did the sisters live in California? What, if anything, did they do with the rye once they harvested it? How often did they grow rye? Did they grow other crops as a sort of living memory for their early lives on the farm? The more we learn, the more we want to know.