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This Delaware 'farmette' helped feed America while the men fought in WWII

Meredith Newman
The News Journal

Before women took to the streets to demand equal pay and before Rosie the Riveter flexed her muscles in factories, farmettes were slaughtering pigs and milking cows.

They operated heavy machinery. They lifted stacks of hay. They worked even when injured.

They did all of it because the men were fighting World War II. 

June Kleban, 95, of Arden, recalls her time spent on a farm during time with the Women's Land Army during World War II.

Yet unlike the iconic Rosies, who became a symbol for American feminism, strength and patriotism, the Women's Land Army is an often forgotten part of U.S. history.

"It was never talked about or written about," said Arden resident June Kleban. Now 95, she's a thin, petite woman, a bit stooped with age. A halo of soft white hair surrounds a face lit up by the warmth of easy smiles as she thoughtfully considers questions. 

"I consider it to be one of the finest times of my life," she said.

Then a New Jersey resident, Kleban was sent first to a small family farm south of Poughkeepsie, New York, with only a suitcase of clothes, including her daily uniform of jeans, a plaid shirt and worker boots. 

She helped manage cows, pigs and chickens there, and was later transferred to a Pennsylvania dairy farm where she was the only woman helping manage 300 cows with a crew of men too young or old to go to war. 

First established during World War I, the Women's Land Army asked wives, teachers, secretaries and college students to help the agriculture industry keep crop and livestock production high during wartime. Their nickname of farmette was a play off the term suffragette. 

Kleban was one of the thousands of women who worked on farms during World War II, helping fill roles of the millions of male laborers who were either drafted or enlisted to fight. 

"They're not just feeding America," said Kara Dixon Vuic, a history professor at Texas Christian University. "They are feeding the Allies."

'That's just what I want'

Born in 1923, Kleban spent most of her childhood on a farm in New Jersey. As a young girl, she embraced the chance to help her father manage the animals and deliver the heavy milk bottles to her neighbors.

She was raised by two Jewish Lithuanian immigrants who were politically and socially conscious. Her mother was active in women's suffrage groups, her father was the director of an organization that helped Jewish refugees. 

June Kleban pictured in 1945 doing farm work following her time in the Women's Land Army during World War II.

Growing up, Kleban said she always saw herself working on a farm as an adult. Her father encouraged her to apply to the women's college at Rutgers University and major in agriculture.

During her freshman year in 1942, she was one of eight students in the women's college majoring in agriculture. The classes were small, since many young men — including her two brothers — were fighting in the war.

One day, as she was walking to class, she saw a poster on a bulletin board seeking women to work on farms. The government was going to offer a month training for women at the New York State School of Agriculture on Long Island 

"I said, 'That's just what I want,'" Kleban recalled. She applied and was accepted.

Based on British program

The Women's Land Army was inspired by Great Britain's Land Lassies, in which thousands of women helped sustain British farms during World War I, according to report by Smithsonian

Many of the U.S. women were sent to farms along the West and East coasts, particularly in states such as California, Oregon and New York. Some farmers in Midwestern and Southern states were against the idea of women —who were often white and middle class — working on a farm.

German prisoners of war worked in Delaware poultry processing plants during World War II.

Dixon Vuic, the TCU professor, said the story of the farmettes is often overlooked because the work was seasonal and less publicized.

Lots of groups pitched in to bring crops home and take care of animals. The U.S. government also had prisoners of war and Japanese Americans in internment camps work on farms. Photos from the Delaware Public Archives show school children, German POWs and Fort Miles soldiers helping bring in crops and slaughter chickens in Delaware during the war.

Generally, Vuic said, the difference between the women who worked in the factories and those who worked on the farms was their socioeconomic status. Women who became the sole provider of their families during the war took the factory jobs because they paid better.

Women who wanted help with wartime efforts, and weren't in desperate need of a paycheck, often worked on the farms. 

The Women's Land Army often recruited women in high-end department stores, Dixon Vuic said.

'It was so unusual'

During the training, Kleban began her day at 5 a.m. and worked until dark.

She learned how to milk cows by hand and machine, handle horses and operate heavy machinery. She and the 30 other women in the training were also taught the economics of farming. 

Kleban said she liked to do everything, even dumping the animal manure and butchering chickens.

“Frankly, I don’t think we thought much of women’s roles at that time,” she said. 

Kleban's small family farm south of Poughkeepsie, New York, belonged to the Friedmans, a family of German Jewish refugees who had recently come to America to escape the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

The mother, father, teenage daughter and son around Kleban's age lived in a simple farm house on a dairy farm. Kleban lived in their attic.

The Friedman son, Kleban and another young German refugee were the primary workers on the farm. The teenage daughter had difficulty walking, a side effect of fighting polio as a child.

Kleban and the son took turns with the duties. As one milked the cows and shoveled the manure, the other took care of the pigs and chickens. The next day, they switched. 

City school children helped with agricultural efforts during World War II.

Despite the language barrier — the parents spoke almost no English —  Kleban said the family was extremely kind and social with her.

She dined with them at every meal and was constantly surrounded by delicious food. She still recalls the sweetness of the cream that made its way to the top of the milk and the warm apple pudding the mother made. 

On the weekends, Kleban and the children went to barn dances with the other German families in the area. Although she was on the farm to help with American wartime efforts, Kleban said she felt embedded in German culture. 

"It was like living in Europe," she said. "That's why I enjoyed it, it was so unusual."

The family never talked about their experiences as Jews in Nazi Germany, though, Kleban said. At that point in the war, it was still too early to know how many of their friends and family would be killed in the Holocaust. 

Pierced by a pitchfork

The job could be dangerous. One day, Kleban attempted to rearrange the hay in the family's barn and accidentally pierced her knee with the pitchfork. She was hospitalized for several days to make sure she didn't contract tetanus. She immediately went back to work when she returned. 

After a five-month stay, Kleban returned to Rutgers for the fall semester. She would continue to stay in touch with the family for several decades. All of them have since died. 

In 1945, Kleban was placed on another farm, this time at a certified dairy farm in South Montrose, Pennsylvania that had 300 cows. She was one of about a dozen employees, and she was the only female.

Kleban said she was never treated differently or poorly by the men. It's one reason she enjoyed those years so much — everyone was kind to her.

She was working on the Pennsylvania farm when Japan officially surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945. Kleban said there wasn't a "great to-do" about the end of the war.

"Everyone was just glad that it was over," she said. 

June Kleban, 95, of Arden, recalls her time spent on a farm during time with the Women's Land Army during World War II.

Soon after, Kleban returned to Rutgers, where she graduated that spring. She accepted a job at the college's library and took graduate courses in library sciences. 

After marrying her husband, Bernard, in her 30s, they moved to Arden to be near his job at Hercules Inc. She raised two children, a daughter and a son, with whom she lives now.

Her son, Allan Kleban, said his mother rarely talked about her experience with the Women's Land Army when he and his sister were young. He didn't learn the full extent of his mother's work until college.  

Over the years, Kleban continued to remain active by regularly going on hikes and organizing family trips to national parks. 

But she never worked on a farm again. 

Kleban said it wasn't hard for her to leave that part of her life behind. She enjoyed being married and raising her children.

When thinks back, she pictures her 19-year-old self on the Friedman farm. She hears the German farmer yelling at the cows in his deep, rough voice. She tastes the wife's apple pudding. 

"I enjoyed whatever I was doing," she said. "I fit in." 

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Contact Meredith Newman at (302) 324-2386 or mnewman@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @MereNewman.