 | | | Mary Ostrander, in her 100th year, talks to school children about life growing up on a dairy farm. Photo Sophie Braccini | | | | | | When Mary Ostrander talks to third graders about life on a dairy farm at the beginning of the 20th century, she speaks from experience. The soon to be 100-year-old, who still drives her red car from Moraga Royale to the library where she volunteers with the Historical Society, loves telling incredulous youngsters of a time with no Internet, television or washing machines, when women daily cleaned the kerosene lamps that gave light at night and butter was made by hand.
"When I was a little girl, we milked our five cows, put the milk in a pail, then poured it in a separator," Ostrander told the children, "then my brother and I would collect the cream; my father would take it to the creamery where it would be churned into butter." Every morning, fresh milk from the Moraga Valley would be taken by carts to what is now Emeryville and shipped to San Francisco. She showed the children the big catalogues that people received in the mail where they could find everything from a woodstove to the metal irons that had to be warmed on the stove, to feed for animals.
Ostrander's talk was part of an historical field trip for Moraga elementary school children that took them from prehistoric times to when the railroad track ended in 1957. The presentation was divided into five sections: first, Kathy Zuber talked about prehistoric Moraga when mastodons, bigger than mammoths, roamed the hills. Later in the day, the children went to Bollinger Canyon and observed the geological strata that formed over millennium. Then Pam Williams discussed the Saklan Indian civilization and their way of life in the East Bay settlements, which were forever disturbed by the arrival of the Spaniards. She talked about the land grant in 1835 of 13,000 acres, roughly what is now Lamorinda and Canyon, given to Joaquin Moraga and his cousin Juan Bernal. The children viewed from afar the original adobe home that Joaquin Moraga built for his family.
Susan Sperry continued the presentation, talking about how Moraga lost most of his money and land in a legal dispute between miners who didn't find gold, but instead came to squat the land. She also talked about the time Canyon had more registered voters than any other town in California because of the rowdy lumberjacks who cut all the redwoods to construct the beautiful San Francisco mansions. Then Sam Sperry told the children about how James Irvine converted most of the cattle ranches into pear and walnut orchards, and how the Sacramento Northern railroad that was in operation between 1913 and 1957 transported the pear crops and made Moraga the capital of Bartlett pears.
As part of their tour, the children also visited the Moraga Ranch, which used to be a settlement for the orchards' workers, and the Hacienda de las Flores built by Donald Rheem in the late '50s.
"It is a very well organized field trip," said Ann Ralph who teaches third grade at Donald Rheem Elementary School. "We count on the parents to drive the children around, and on the volunteers to tell all the stories. Over the years we've created a little packet that the children have to carry around and answer questions, adding accountability in a fun way." For Rheem School the field trip is the introduction of the social studies unit on local history.
"Before 1999 we used to go to classrooms to present the information to the kids," added Historical Society volunteer Elsie Mastick. "Our hope is that enough money will be raised to purchase and preserve the Moraga Adobe and that it will be the central point for the historical days, for children in Moraga, Orinda and Lafayette."
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA