My great-grandmother, Sarah Ardalia Flewharty Ladd, traveled from Texas to Southern Idaho at the turn of the century in a wagon. She and her husband and children homesteaded along the Snake River, a harsh and unforgiving land. My grandfather told me that his mother carried a short-handled hoe whenever she worked in her vegetable garden, to kill the rattlesnakes that were drawn into the shade and cool of the plants. He described her quickly swinging the blade to lop off the offending serpent's head, then replacing the hoe into her belt and returning to harvesting or weeding or carrying buckets of water.
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