Alice Lillian Mock

Alice Mock (139456061)

AT 82, CHAMPION DAIRY FARMER STILL GOING STRONG, HELPING OTHERS

By Kathy James--Chronicle Reporter
In 1938 Satsop resident Alice Mock made up her mind to buy a farm, despite her husband's objections. But the land just west of the Satsop River that she wanted to buy required a large deposit.
"I wanted the place, but I didn't have the $1,500," she said. "There were a lot of farms around here at the time, so I went to work picking peas. I picked peas to beat the dickens because I was going to get the money (for the farm)."
Her efforts and determination got her a job teaching field bosses how to pick peas and soon earned her way up to supervisor in Pacific and Grays Harbor counties.
"I thought it was pretty smart," she said shyly. "I made more money in a year than my husband." Her husband. Earnest, worked for the Schafer Brothers as a locomotive engineer. She took possession of the land in 1940.
Mock said she needed the land for her growing herd of jerseys, which she was keeping on an acre in Satsop. She purchased her first cow for $40. "It was more than I could afford, but (the owner) told me I had a very good reputation and could pay the rest out of the milk money," she said. "She was about ready to calf and he didn't want to be bothered with it."
Mock's first cow, Flossy, began what was to become a well known herd of dairy cows. By the time she bought the 80 acres west of the Satsop River, her herd consisted of seven cows and some heifers. "I had to have a place to put them," she said.
Several of Mock's cows won awards for their milk producing and were the first to produce more than 1,000 pounds of butter fat in a year in Grays Harbor County. Her cows won the president's cup in 1961 and 1962 for the highest production in the United States.
"I hate to talk about it because people think you're braggy," she said. "I did it because I liked to do it, I wanted to do it and because I loved my cows." Her prowess in the dairy field got her elected as the first woman on the Gray's Harbor County Dairymen's Association.
Despite her business successes and personal accomplishments, Mock said her greatest pride and greatest fun was in her children and in her activities with 4-H. Her children consisted of her daughter and 18 other children from various families.
"The children I had were children that needed a home," she said. "I like kids and worked with 4-H; that's the proud thing of my life. The most fun was in teaching the kids to be good men and women and that I was still here if things went bad," she said.
It wasn't unusual for children and sleeping bags to cover the living room floor on Friday nights, she said.
"The neighbor kids would come up on their bikes and go home the next day," she said smiling. "At 11 a.m. they stopped whatever they were doing, swim until 1 p.m., drag back and eat and then go back to their chores or fiddle around."
"That was the way life was," she said. "It was fun."
After recurring bouts with pneumonia in 1981 and 1982, Mock transferred her herd to a dairyman in Skagit County.
With her health restored, but her herd gone, Mock, 82, works in her garden and gives much of the produce to her children and local charitable organizations. She recently gave a 140-pound squash to the Salvation Army.
She specializes in growing new and unusual types of vegetables, such as giant squash, a new variety of green bean that "leaves the Bluelake variety setting still," and Guatemalan squash.
"I don't especially like squash," she said. But the Guatemalan squash is "almost solid all the way through and has a terrific flavor," she reported. She had only five seeds to begin with, but now has several ounces for next year. She said she won't sell these large green squash yet because she wants to see how well they do over the winter.
She sells the rest of her squash for 10 cents a pound.
"It's the fun to see what you can do with the things," she said of her unusual varieties of vegetables. "I give away lots to (organizations) who need it. Why not? God gives me the strength to do."--The Chronicle, October 23, 1985, pA-3
Contributor: Thomas Moak (47512799) • [email%C2%A0protected]* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Oct 13 2022, 0:26:27 UTC