Hole in the Clouds


Tag: 1939

A Pepper Picker

Apr 25, 2017

Pausing for her picture in 1939, on her way back to the house from the pepper patch. The pincurls in her hair suggest that she's got post-pepper-picking plans for the evening.

She was one of eight children in the Schrock family in the Yakima Valley of Washington state, where they were clients of a Farm Security Administration tenant-purchase program, a New Deal effort to help migrant farm families obtain homes and farmland of their own. The program worked best, it turned out, for families that broke the rules and generated some cash income by finding work off the farm.

Johnny Cash grew up in a similar FSA project in Dyess, Arkansas.

garden   Farm Security Administration   Depression   child   Schrock family   1939   girl   Yakima Valley, Washington   (Image credit: Dorothea Lange via Shorpy)