TOWN OF CADY, WI – On a rolling hill just outside of the Spring Valley, lives Shirley Hampton. At 94 (95 next month), she still lives on the same 80-acre family farm she grew up on her entire life. With eight brothers and sisters, there was never a dull moment and there was plenty of work to do on the family dairy farm to keep the siblings busy.
Shirley recalls her childhood on the farm, “All of us kids could ride horses, we drove tractors, and my two older sisters could milk by hand, before we had electricity and milkers.”
The original house on the family farm burned during the Great Depression years. With materials and money hard to come by, the first year the family spent the winter in the grainary, and the next winter, in the newly built basement of the house while the upper part was being finished. Shirley still lives in the house that was rebuilt following the fire.
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